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TO 

MY FELLOW-AMERICANS 

WHO 

HATE THE CURSE 

OF 

THRALL, TYRANNY, USURPATION AND BIGOTRY; 

WHO;, 

AT THE SACRED SHRINE OF TRUTH, 

Will Offer Up Their Prejudices, How Invetei^te Soever, 

When Her Bright Torch Illuminates TheiitMinds; 

WHO, 

Inheriting the Inestimable Blessings 

OF 

Thrice-Holy and Revered Liberty, Acquired By an 

Arduous Struggle Against a Mere Incipient 

Despotism, Will Demand 

THE 

RECOGNITION OF THE IRISH REPUBLIC 

Which is Contending Bravely and Heroically Against as 
Criminal an Oppression as Ever Tried to Crush 

A NOBLE AND GENEROUS NATION 

Which for Seven Centuries Has Struggled in the Same 

Glorious Cause as Did 

Leonidas, Epaminondas, William Tell, Lafayette, Hancock, 

Adams, Franklin and Washington, 

This Work is Dedicated. 



It is Likewise Dedicated to 
THE IMMOKTAL MEMOKY 

OF 

The O'Neills^ the O'DonnellS;, the O'Mores, 

The Sarsfields^ 

The Fitzgeralds, the Shbarses^ the Emmets, 

THE TONES, THE PEARSES, 

The Lalors^ the Mitchels, the Davises^, the Mac Ourtins, 

THE Barrys^ the Mac Swineys and 

THE GREAT, SPLENDID, FAITHFUL, COMMON PEOPLE 

OF IRELAND, 

That Dumb Multitudinous Throng 

Which Sorrowed 

During the Penal Night, Which Bled in '98, Which 

Starved in the Famine, and Which is in Ireland 

Still — What is Left of It — 

With Its Volunteers, Cuman na mBan, Fianna 
and Girl Scouts, 

UNBOUGHT and unterrified. 



WHAT MADE IRELAND 
SINN FEIN 

THE CHIEF POLITICAL CONTENT 
OF 

Pearse^ the Gael of Gaels; 

SOMETHING OF 

Mac Neill^ Ireland^s Historian^ 
Griffith^ Ireland^s Statistician^ 

AND 

The O'Kahilly,, a Leader of the Volunteers 



The Result of a Year's (1919) Study 
in Ireland of Sinn Fein 



EDITED BY 



JOHN X. REGAN, A.M. 

(Kevin Stroma Dorbene) 



5lA 






Copyrighted^ 1921, 

BY 

John X. Rbgan 



•0)CU6247aO 



i 






CONTENTS 



Introduction 



vu 



Padraic Pearsb 




Ghosts 


17 


The Separatist Idea ...... 


35 


The Spiritual Nation 


54 


The Sovereign People ...... 


72 


How Does She Stand? 


94 


The Murder Machine ...... 


113 


An Article Written Three Weeks Before the Rising 


138 


Oration Over O'Donovan Rossa's Grave 


142 


The Future of the Gael 


145 


Education ........ 


155 


From a Hermitage ...... 


158 


EoiN Mac Neill 




Daniel O'Connell and Sinn Fein. Part I 


161 


Daniel O'Connell and Sinn Fein. Part II . 


183 



Arthur Griffith 
When the Government Publishes Sedition . 

The O'Rahillt 
The Secret History of the Irish Volunteers . 



206 



215 



President Wilson, France, and Ireland 
The Flippant Hyphen .... 
Ireland, Politics, and Conscience . 



233 
240 
243 



General Index 



259 



A Worh of SII|attk0 

Here I desire to express my gratitude to Mr. 
William J. Reid, of Boston, an American witJiout a 
drop of Irish Mood in his veins, who so liherally 
assisted me in the piiblication of this work; to Sean 
and Eileen Foley, for constant inspiration; to Art 
Joyce, for assistance in proof-reading ; and to Dennis 
Driscoll, for aid 'beyond words; lastly, to the printer, 
Mr. John F. Harrigan, Ireland's devoted friend. 

J. X. R. 
Boston, Mass., 1921. 



IXTEODUCTION 

Even those heretofore iinattracted by the sacrifices that 
have starred the recent years of Irish history are now being 
held and stirred by the heroic witnesses coming forward wave 
after wave in testimony of a people's right and duty to live 
their own lives. They clamor for information. They are 
eager to know something of Ireland's history. They are avid 
of learning its salient facts quickly. And their chief query is, 
^'What is the hest history of Ireland?'' 

I do not know of any adequate reply to this important 
query unless it is contained, indirectly, in the observation of 
Padraic Pearse that the student of Irish atl'airs who does not 
know Irish literature is ignorant of the awful intensity of the 
Irish desire for Separation as he is ignorant of one of the chief 
forces which make Separation inevitable, and directly, one may 
almost aver, in the writings of Pearse himself. Boldly I make 
the claim that the best short history of Ireland, the history that 
is most vital and psychological, the history containing the 
supreme synthesis of Eire's story, is to be had in Padraic 
Pearse's writings. Bold and novel as this claim may appear, 
its justice cannot, I think, be assailed. Not professedly a 
history, still his writings comprehend the very marrow of 
Ireland's gallant and sorrowful story. Very many of the books 
which profess to be histories of Ireland are the products of 
hostile minds, or minds lacking in sympathetic knowledge, or 
minds that were not thoroughly Gaelic. But Padraic Pearse's 
mind was Gaelic in its everj^ fibre. Some one has said that the 
ancient and medieval and modern Gaelic currents meet in 
Pearse. I would go farther and maintain that they are con- 
centrated in this truly great Gael. Even the most casual study 

VII 



of Pearse's writings must compel the judgment that his are 
the thoughts of a spiritual and catholic mind ; the ideals of a 
mind generous and refined, the expressions of a mind at once 
faithful, tender and robust, — all the qualities that distinguish 
the historic Gaelic mind. No Irishman so vividly or so elo- 
quently impressed the temper, the vision, and the genius of 
the Gaelic mind on what he did and what he wrote as did 
Pearse. 

Professor Eoin Mac Neill in his scholarly work, '' Phases 
of Irish History/' undoubtedly evinces the Gaelicness of his 
mind. At the end of this book he states and answers an obvious 
objection that occurs to the student of Irish history. Because 
this passage is so valuable, so just and so noble I cannot 
refrain from citing it here in full. He says : 

'^What I have said of Irish institutions has of necessity 
taken often the form of an apologia; of necessity, because I 
have found the balance heavily weighted down. But, one may 
object, there must have been some radical defect in this ancient 
civilisation; otherwise its inherent soundness would have been 
more secure against either castles or saltpetre. How came it 
that a brave and intelligent and energetic people did not keep 
itself in the forefront of loestern development? 

"My answer to that is, that Ireland was ruled by a patri- 
cian class — and that is not all, for other countries have made 
remarkable progress under a patrician rule. The Irish nobility 
were rendered incapable of using their intelligence to profit 
with the times by one defect — they were perhaps the most 
intensely proud class of men that ever existed. The pride was 
bred in their bones. It came to them out of an immemorial 
past. The history of the Gaelic peoples falls into cycles of four 
centuries, beginning with our earliest knowledge of the Celts 
in the Hallstatt Period. There are four centuries of conquest, 
expansion and domination, before the Celts came to Ireland. 
By this time, pride of race was already their dominant 
sentiment. 

< "Four centuries more established the Celtic rule in Ireland. 

VIII 



Their rule in Ireland remained secure during four centuries of 
Roman domination in Gaul and Britain. During four centuries 
of Germanic invasion and conquest, Ireland stood intact. After 
four centuries of Norse supremacy over neighboring seas and 
islands, Ireland emerged unconquered. Tivo thousand years 
of unbroken sway may suffice to set pride above prudence in 
the traditions of any class. At the end of another cycle, when 
the Irish nobles were scattered over Europe, the nobility of 
their bearing and the distinction of their manners won admira- 
tion for them in every land but one. 

"This intense pride is blazoned on the pages of our medi- 
eval literature, in annals, genealogies, stories, poems. The* 
poets lived by ministering to it. 

'"Too much pride blinded the native rulers of Ireland to the 
insecurity of their state, and made them careless of their safety, 
and neglectful of the measures it required. Glorying in the 
long vista of the past, they did not look before them. They were 
conservative, inadaptable, unproviding. Herein lay the fatal 
weakness of medieval Ireland." (PP. 354, 355) 

And in the same book Eoin Mac Neill writes thus of Irish 
nationality : 

"You will not find anywhere in Europe during that age 
(the twelfth century) any approach towards the definite and 
concrete sense of nationality — of country and people in one — 
which is the common expression of the Irish mind in that age. 
Beginning with the sixth century chronicle, every Irish history 
is a history of Ireland — there is not one history of a tribal 
territory or of any grouping of tribal territories. Every Irish 
law-book is a book of the laws of Ireland — there are no terri- 
torial laws and no provincial laws. The whole literature is 
pervaded by the notion of one country common to all Irishmen. 
So far as Mr. Orpen's statement is concerned with the expres- 
sion of historical truth, it has this much of truth — that neither 
in Ireland nor in any other country was the modern sentiment 
of political nationality fully formed in the popular mind. Mr. 
Orpen goes on to contrast Irish localism with the centralised 

IX 



monarchies of Europe. Let us hope he does not imagine that 
any one of these centralised monarchies was the expression of 
the sentiment of country in the popular m,ind or in the mind 
of the ruler. It is true that the sentiment of country some- 
times obtained its delimitation from centralised poiver — hut 
the sentiments which found expression in centralised power 
were those of fear on the one side and domination on the other; 
and students who study medieval history with a map will 
quickly apprehend that these two sentiments, fear and domina- 
tion, shaped, the boundaries of country in defiance of the senti- 
ments connected with country, race, language, nationality. In 
Ireland, on the other hand, we find the clear development of 
the national consciousness, associated with the country, to a 
degree that is found notvhere else . . . the Irish people stand 
singular and eminent in those times, from the fifth century 
forward, as the possessors of an intense national consciousness. 
(PP. 246-248) 

But indisputably no contemporary Irishman knew and 
expressed Irish history so accurately, briefly, and interestingly 
as Pearse. He reflected the thoughts of Tone, of Mitchel, of 
Lalor, and of Davis, the highest exponents, the authentic voices 
of the national tradition. He loved them, pondered them, knew 
them by heart. His own living, fresh phrases and memorable 
utterances are the foil on which he gives us, often in their own 
words, the aims and ideals, the thoughts and the principles of 
these, ^^the fathers of the national faith," as he calls them. In 
swift, vivid phrases Pearse pours out from his own burning, 
kindred spirit contagious admiration for the outstanding names 
in Irish history. Of Tone he says: ^"^He was the greatest of 
Irish nationalists; I ielieve he was the greatest of Irish m,en 
. . . he made articulate the dunib voices of the centuries, he 
gave Ireland a clear and precise and worthy concept of nation- 
ality. . . . Thinker and doer, dreamer of the immortal dream 
and doer of the immortal deed. . . . This man's soul was a 
burning flame, a flame so ardent, so generous, so pure, that to 
come into communion with it is to come unto a new baptism, 



unto a new regeneration and cleansing." Of Mitchel he 
writes: "Mitchel was of the stuff of which the great prophets 
and ecstatics have been made. He did really hold converse with 
God; he did really deliver God's ivord to man, deliver it fiery- 
tongued. MitcheVs is the last of the four gospels of the new 
testament of Irish nationality, the last and the fieriest and the 
most sublime. It flames ivith apocalyptic tcrath, such wrath 
as there is nowhere else in literature." He writes of Lalor: 
"Lalor was a fiery spirit, as of some angelic missionary, im- 
prisoned for a feic years in a very frail tenement, draioing his 
earthly breath in pain; but strong with a great spiritual 
strength and gifted with a mind which had the trenchant 
beauty of steel. What he had to say for his people (and for all 
mankind) was said in a very few tvords. No one who wrote as 
little as Lalor has ever ivritten so well." And of Davis he 
writes: "Davis was the first of modern Irishmen to make 
explicit the truth that a nationality is a spirituality . . . a 
very great man, one of our greatest men. None of his contem- 
poraries had any doubt about his greatness. He was the 
greatest influence among them, and the noblest influence; and 
he has been the greatest and noblest influence in Irish history 
since Tone. . . . The highest form of genius is the genius for 
sanctity, the genius for noble life and thought. That genius 
was Davis's. Character is the greatest thing in man; and 
Davis's character was such as the Apollo Belvidere is said to 
be in the physical order, — in his presence all men stood more 
erect." 

Pearse also compares, discriminates, and contrasts all the 
great leaders in Irish history. He describes and traces the 
whole philosophy of Irish nationality with a splendid concise- 
ness, shows its origin, its continuity, its inevitability, how the 
past is the forerunner of the present, the present the growth 
of the past, and proves that the chain of the Separatist tradition 
never once snapped during the centuries. He declares, and I 
do not think his statement can be justly denied, that the Irish 
mind "is the clearest mind that has ever applied itself to the 

XI 



consideration of nationality and of national freedom." Time 
and time again he insists upon the antiquity, the spirituality, 
the unchangeability, the fixity, the determinateness, the con- 
tinuity, the indestructibility of Irish nationality. His search- 
ing intellect ''has quickened the dead years and all the quiet 
dust." 

For Pearse's style, the essays contained in this volume will 
probably speak better than elaborate comment. It is a style 
with life and distinction; is terse and impressive; everywhere 
permeated with the Gaelic note and spirit. Gaelic in every 
pulse of his being, Pearse is rich in spirituality, in ethical 
fervor. Characterised by that natural and noble simplicity 
which is the hallmark of the highest art, his language is 
eminently lucid and virile, the vehicle of thought never super- 
ficial but always profound and philosophical. Indeed it is 
difficult to speak of his style with restraint. Natural and 
unaffected as those who knew him have told me he was, it has 
a glow and loftiness that belong only to the master, a fire and 
music that are associated only with a man who has lived his 
subject, whose life followed the lead whole-heartedly of one 
transcendent idea, the independence of his country, with all it 
implies, imports and connotes, a man who died for what he 
had lived, Ireland. As he wrote a few hours before death : 

"I have lived and loved and lal)ored 
With a patriot's heart and will, 
That the dawning years might find thee 
Fearless and unfette7-ed still.'' 

Ireland's magnificent past, a past with a splendor and 
magnificence and beauty practically unknown to the modern 
world, haunted Padraic Pearse like a passion, — her folk-lore, 
her heroes, and her martyrs were all to him 

''An appetite, a feeling and a love." 

This old civilisation of Ireland so splendid in its traditions and 
its achievements he loved with an exceeding great love. Early 

XII 



in life, in his teens still, Pearse clearly perceived that only in 
a free Ireland should or could there be scope for the grand, 
noble ideals of the Gael. In his ''Future of the Gael" he 
showed how vivid was his sensing of the modern world's yearn- 
ing need of these ideals. Living and communing with Ireland's, 
greatest he resolved to follow the path they trod. His resolu- 
tion made, he never deviated by one hair's breadth from his 
supreme purpose, never suffered any influence to interfere with 
or deflect his efforts from freeing his country. 

In every generation it has been the impetus of the Irish 
tradition that has flung forward the Tones and the Pearses, or 
rather of what Pearse called "the repositories of the Irish tradi- 
tion, as well the spiritual tradition of nationality as the kin- 
dred tradition of stubborn physical resistance to England ... 
the great, splendid, faithful, common people, — that dumb multi- 
tudinous throng which sorrowed during the penal night, which 
bled in '98, ivhich starved in the famine; and which is here 
still — what is left of it — unbought and unterrified. Let no man 
be mistaken as to ivho will be lord in Ireland when Ireland is 
free. The people will be lord and master. The people who 
wept in Gethsemane, who trod the sorrowful way, who died 
naked on a cross, who went down into hell, will rise again 
glorious and immortal, will sit on the right hand of God, and 
will come in the end to give judgment, a fudge just and 
terrible." I think it was Duffy who said "two things fashion 
their own channel, the strong man and the waterfall." Pearse 
in the present generation was the strong man because he was 
a thinker — his was a telescopic and microscopic intellect. His 
words were sanctified by the grace of pure Gaelic thought. The 
truth, obvious or recondite, Pearse loved. The philosophy of 
things, the profound and ultimate reasons, effects far and 
remote from their causes this true Noble among men dug for 
with the unremitting energy, patience, and persistence of the 
scholar. One star, one criterion alone guided him as erect he 
advanced through life — Truth. And his intellect was too 
steady, too well-balanced, too sound to play the fool about or 



XIII 



disregard very simple, palpable facts. He saw that the many 
did this to their intellectual degradation. And like the fore- 
most lovers of Truth he never ran away from it in times of 
danger for the shelter of expediency or selfish prudence. His 
devotion to Truth and Justice he sealed by his splendid death. 
Pearse saw life clearly and he saw it whole. 

Is it any wonder, then, that I maintain that the arresting 
facts of Ireland's history so superbly enunciated by Padraic 
Pearse, his unexcelled proclamation of Irish truths, his unmis- 
takably complete harmony and kinship with ''all that was 
olden and beautiful and Gaelic in Ireland," in a word, the 
utter Gaelicness of all he thought, wrote, spoke, and did, were 
What Made Ireland Sinn Fein? He but spoke the ancient, 
unbroken, holy tradition of Ireland to her men and women of 
his time and day but his voice rang out at an hour when the 
tide of English ideas was gaining on the shores of Irish life, 
and he spoke it with a purer accent than had yet been heard in 
the modern world. From November, 1919, to Octx^ber, 1920, 1 
was in Ireland with the specific purpose of studying the genesis 
and genius of Sinn Fein. I may almost put this down as my 
ultimate conclusion that the sum total of my experience was. 
the absorption of the content of Pearse, his life and teaching. 
I saw that it was Pearse's ideas and ideals, or rather, I should 
say, the ideas and ideals that are the rich inheritance of Irish 
national tradition and which Pearse taught and lived with 
such passionate, Gaelic sincerity that had awakened and fired 
the soul of a whole people. I saw that it was chiefly due to 
Pearse's influence that the instinct for liberty which I beheld 
everywhere in Ireland was so practical and so intense, in AE. 
and the humblest Volunteer, in north, south, east, and west 
alike. I came into contact with a fearless people inflexibly 
resolute after seven centuries of oppression probably unparal- 
leled ; I mingled in intimate intercourse with a people gay and 
buoyant despite a tornado of inhuman repression, raids, arrests, 
murders, the trying ordeal of a pandemonium of ruthlessness. 
And their hopes and thoughts were Pearse's, their dynamic 

XIV 



maxims Pearse's, the unconquerable hope they nursed was that 
nursed by all the heroic generations of Ireland. 

The more one studies the writings of Pearse, the more one 
is convinced, — one may almost say, — so deeply had he absorbed 
the Gaelic spirit, so true a Gael was he, — that to be familiar 
with Pearse is to be familiar with the Gaelic tradition, to know 
Pearse's mind is to know the Gaelic mind. And with no desire 
to detract from the considerable contributions of others in 
previous generations and in the present, I cannot but believe 
that Pearse's influence, especially as exerted on the political 
and national thought of his country was largest, as probably 
his opportunity was greatest. Even from the viewpoint of 
summary I am not contending that Pearse's writings exhaust 
the subject of Irish history, but, in my judgment, they go 
farther than any other in presenting and expounding a syn- 
thetic, comprehensive, true view of it, the philosophy of it. 

When in addition to all this we find Pearse's writings 
strikingly earnest, always interesting, without monotony or 
diflfuseness, with predictions that have been verified by subse- 
quent events, I venture to declare that they will be the chief 
classics of Irish nationality. Masterful is his performance, 
and unless we realise something of what it means in all its 
aspects, we cannot justly appreciate either the Ireland of the 
centuried conflict or the fighting Ireland of today. It was a 
performance, to which Irishmen, unless false to themselves 
and recreant to all their traditions, could not fail to respond, 
one which only a man who had been gifted with Gaelic vision 
and had verily become Gaelic tradition incarnated, could con- 
ceive and achieve; so extensive in its influence not only upon 
Irish minds all over the world but also upon human thought 
and endeavor that future ages may well wonder at the wisdom, 
the intellectual and moral stature of the man. 

To men who place honor above riches, sincerity above 
fame, the climbing up steep ways to justice rather than the 
easy swim with the current, the hopes and the projects, the 

XV 



ideals and the deeds of pure-souled men like Padraic Pearse 
will have perennial interest. 

As supplementary to Pearse's writings I conjoin some im- 
portant articles by Professor Mac Neill, Arthur Griffith, and 
The O'Rahilly. 

Some results from a little research into our American past 
I also include as valuable against attacks of pseudo-Americans. 

John X. Regan_, M.A. 

Boston, Mass., Dec. 1920. 



XVI 



GHOSTS * 

P. H. Pearse 

St. Enda's College, 
Rathfarnham, 

Christmas Day, 1915. 



THERE has been nothing more terrible in Irish history 
than the failure of the last generation. Other genera- 
tions have failed in Ireland, but they have failed nobly ; 
or, failing ignobly, some man among them has redeemed them 
from infamy by the splendor of his protest. But the failure 
of the last generation has been mean and shameful, and no man 
has arisen from it to say or do a splendid thing in virtue of 
which it shall be forgiven. The whole episode is squalid. It 
will remain the one sickening chapter in a story which, gallant 
or sorrowful, has everywhere else some exaltation of pride. 

"Is mairg do-ghnl go hole agus bhios bocht ina dhiaidh,"' 
says the Irish proverb. "Woe to him that doeth evil and is 
poor after it." The men who have led Ireland for twenty-five 
years have done evil, and they are bankrupt. They are bank- 
rupt in policy, bankrupt in credit, bankrupt now even in words. 
They have nothing to propose to Ireland, no way of wisdom, 
no counsel of courage. When they speak they speak only 



* (Preface — Here be ghosts that I have raised this Christmastide, 
ghosts of dead men that have bequeathed a trust to us living men. 
Ghosts are troublesome things in a house or in a family, as we knew 
even before Ibsen taught us. There is only one way to appease a ghost. 
You must do the thing it asks you. The ghosts of a nation sometimes 
ask very big things, and they must be appeased whatever the cost. Of 
the shade of the Norwegian dramatist I beg forgiveness for a plagiaristic, 
but inevitable, title.) 



18 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

untruth and blasphemy. Their utterances are no longer the 
utterances of men. They are the mumblings and the gibber- 
ings of lost souls. 

One finds oneself wondering what sin these men have been 
guilty of that so great a shame should come upon them. Is it 
that they are punished with loss of manhood because in their 
youth they committed a crime against manhood? . . . Does 
the ghost of Parnell hunt them to their damnation? 

Even had the men themselves been less base, their failure 
would have been inevitable. When one thinks over the matter 
for a little one sees that they have built upon an untruth. 
They have conceived of nationality as a material thing, whereas 
it is a spiritual thing. They have made the same mistake 
that a man would make if he were to forget that he has an 
immortal soul. They have not recognised in their people the 
image and likeness of God. Hence, the nation to them is not 
all holy, a thing inviolate and inviolable, a thing that a man 
dare not sell or dishonor on pain of eternal perdition. They 
have thought of nationality as a thing to be negotiated about 
as men negotiate about a tariff or about a trade route, rather 
than as an immediate jewel to be preserved at all peril, a thing 
so sacred that it may not be brought into the market places at 
all or spoken of where men traflic. 

He who builds on lies rears only lies. The untruth that 
nationality is corporeal, a thing defined by statutes and guar- 
anteed by mutual interests, is at the base of the untruth that 
freedom, which is the condition of a hale nationality, is a 
status to be conceded rather than a glory to be achieved ; and 
of the other untruth that it can ever be lawful in the interest 
of empire, iu the interest of wealth, in the interest of quiet 
living, to forego the right to freedom. The contrary is the 
truth. Freedom, being a spiritual necessity, transcends all 
corporal necessities, and when freedom is being considered 
interests should not be spoken of. Or, if the terms of the 
countinghouse be the ones that are best understood, let us put 
it that it is the highest interest of a nation to be free. 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 19 

Like a divine religion, national freedom bears the marks 
of unity, of sanctity, of catholicity, of apostolic succession. 
Of unity, for it contemplates the nation as one; of sanctity, 
for it is holy in itself and in those who serve it ; of catholicity, 
for it embraces all the men and women of the nation ; of apos- 
tolic succession, for it, or the aspiration after it, passes down 
from generation to generation from the nation's fathers. A 
nation's fundamental idea of freedom is not affected by the 
accidents of time and circumstance. It does not vary with 
the centuries, or with the comings and goings of men or of 
empires. The substance of truth does not change, nor does 
the substance of freedom. Yesterday's definition of both the 
one and the other is today's definition and will be tomorrow's. 
As the body of truth which a true church teaches can neither 
be increased nor diminished — though truths implicit in the 
first definition may be made explicit in later definitions — so a 
true definition of freedom remains constant; it cannot be added 
to, or subtracted from or varied in its essentials, though things 
implicit in it may be made explicit by a later definition. If 
the definition can be varied in its essentials, or added to, or 
subtracted from, it was not a true definition in the first 
instance. 

To be concrete, if we today are fighting for something 
either greater than or less than the thing our fathers fought 
for, either our fathers did not fight for freedom at all, or we 
are not fighting for freedom. If I do not hold the faith of 
Tone, and if Tone was not a heretic, then I am. If Tone said 
"Break the connection with England," and if I say "Maintain 
the connection with England," I may be preaching a saner 
(as I am certainly preaching a safer) gospel than his, but I 
am obviously not preaching the same gospel. 

Now what Tone taught, and the fathers of our national 
faith before and after Tone, is ascertainable. It stands re- 
corded. It has fulness, it has clarity, the sufficiency and 
definiteness of dogma. It lives in great and memorable 



20 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

phrases, a grandiose national faith. They, too, have left us 
their Credo. 

The Irish mind is the clearest mind that has ever applied 
itself to the consideration of nationality and of national free- 
dom. A chance phrase of Keating's might almost stand as a 
definition. He spoke of Ireland as "domhan beag innti fein," 
a little world in herself. It was characteristic of Irish-speaking 
men that when they thought of the Irish nation they thought 
less of its outer forms and pomps than of the inner thing 
which was its soul. They recognised that the Irish life was 
the thing that mattered, and that, the Irish life dead, the Irish 
nation was dead. But they recognised that freedom was the 
essential condition of a vigorous Irish Hfe. And for freedom 
they raised their ranns; for freedom they stood in battle 
through five bloody centuries. 

II. 

Irish nationality is an ancient spiritual tradition, one of 
the oldest and most august traditions in the world. Politi- 
cally, Ireland's claim has been for freedom in order to the full 
and perpetual life of that tradition. The generations of Ire- 
land have gone into battle for no other thing. To the Irish 
mind for more than a thousand years freedom has had but 
one definition. It has meant not a limited freedom, a freedom 
conditioned by the interests of another nation, a freedom 
compatible with the suzerain authority of a foreign parliament, 
but absolute freedom, the sovereign control of Irish destinies. 
It has meant not the freedom of a class, but the freedom of a 
people. It has meant not the freedom of a geographical frag- 
ment of Ireland, but the freedom of all Ireland, of every sod 
of Ireland. 

And the freedom thus defined has seemed to the Irish the 
most desirable of all earthly things. They have valued it more 
than land, more than wealth, more than ease, more than 
empire. 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 21 

"Fearr bheith i mbarraibh fuairbheann 
I bhfeitheamh shuainghearr ghrinnmhear, 
Ag seilg troda ar fheinn eachtrann 
'G^ bhfuil fearann bhur sinnsear," 

said Angus Mac Daighre O'Daly. "Better to be on the tops of 
the cold bens keeping watch, short of sleep yet gladsome, 
urging fight against the foreign soldiery that hold your fathers' 
land." And Fearflatha O'Gnive spoke for the generations that 
preferred exile to slavery: 

''Ma thug an deonughadh dhi 
Sacsa nua darbh' ainm Eire 
Bheith re a linn-si i Idimh blodhbhadh, 
Do'n inse is cdir ceileabhradh." 

"If Thou has consented (O God) that there be a new 
England named Ireland, to be ever in the grip of a foe, then to 
this isle we must bid farewell." 

I make the contention that the national demand of Ireland 
is fixed and determined; that that demand has been made by 
every generation; that we of this generation receive it as a 
trust from our fathers; that we are bound by it; that we have 
not the right to alter it or to abate it by one jot or tittle ; and 
that any undertaking made in the name of Ireland to accept 
in full satisfaction of Ireland's claim anything less than the 
generations of Ireland have stood for is null and void, binding 
on Ireland neither by the law of God nor by the law of nations. 

A nation can bind itself by treaty to do or to forego 
specific things, as a man can bind himself by contract ; but no 
treaty which places a nation's body and soul in the power of 
another nation, no treaty which abnegates a nation's nation- 
hood, is binding on that nation, any more than a contract of 
perpetual slavery is binding on an individual. If in a drunken 
frolic or in mere abject unmanliness I sell myself and my 
posterity to a slaveholder to have and to hold as a chattel 
property to himself and his heirs, am I bound by the contract? 



22 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

Are my children bound by it? Can any legal contract make 
a wrong thing binding? And if not, can a contract executed 
in my name, but without my express or implied authority, 
make a wrong thing binding on me and on my children's 
children ? 

Ireland's historic claim is for Separation. Ireland has 
authorised no man to abate that claim. The man who, in the 
name of Ireland, accepts as "a final settlement" anything less 
by one fraction of an iota than Separation from England will 
be repudiated by the new generation as surely as O'Connell 
was repudiated by the generation that came after him. The 
man who, in return for the promise of a thing which is not 
merely less than Separation but which denies Separation and 
proclaims the Union perpetual, the man who, in return for 
this, declares peace between Ireland and England and sacri- 
fices to England as a peace-holocaust the blood of fifty thousand 
Irishmen, is guilty of so immense an infidelity, so immense a 
crime against the Irish nation, that one can only say of him 
that it were better for that man (as it were certainly better 
for his country) that he had not been born. 

I have proved this terrible infidelity against a living 
Irishman, against all who have supported him, against the 
majority of Irishmen who are now past middle life, if I can 
establish that the historic claim of Ireland has been for Sepa- 
ration. And I proceed to establish this. 

III. 

It will be conceded to me that the Irish who opposed the 
landing of the English in 1169 were Separatists. Else why 
oppose those who came to annex? It will be conceded that 
the twelve generations of the Irish nation, the "mere Irish" 
of the English state-papers, who maintained a winning fight 
against English domination in Ireland from 1169 to 1509 
(roughly speaking), were Separatist generations. The Irish 
princes who brought over Edward Bruce and made him King 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 23 

of Ireland were plainly Separatists. The Mac Murrough who 
hammered the English for fifty years and twice out-generalled 
and out-fought an English king was obviously a Separatist. 
The turbulence of Shane O'Neill becomes understandable when 
it is realised that he was a Separatist: Separatists are apt, 
from of old, to be cranky and sore-headed. The Fitzmaurice 
who brought the Spaniards to Smerwick Harbor was a mere 
Separatist: he was one of the pro-Spaniards of those days, — 
Separatists are always pro-Something which the English dis- 
approve. That . proud dissembling O'Neill and that fiery 
O'Donnell who banded the Irish and the Anglo-Irish against 
the English, who brought the Spaniards to Kinsale, who fought 
the war that, but for a guide losing his way, would have been 
known as the Irish War of Separation, were, it will be granted, 
Separatists. Kory O'More was uncommonly like a Separatist. 
Owen Roe O'Neill was admittedly a Separatist, the leader of 
the Separatist Party in the Confederation of Kilkenny. When 
O'Neill sent his veterans into the battle-gap at Benburb with 
the words "In the name of the Father, Son and H0I3* Ghost, 
charge for Ireland!" the word Ireland had for him a very 
definite meaning. If Sarsfield fought technically for an Eng- 
lish king, the popular literature of the day leaves no doubt 
that in the people's mind he stood for Separation, and that 
it was not an English faction but the Irish nation that rallied 
behind the walls of Limerick. So, up to 1691 Ireland was 
Separatist. 

IV. 

During the first three-quarters of the eighteenth century 
a miracle wrought itself. So does the germ of Separation 
inhere in the soil of Ireland that the very Cromwellians and 
Williamites were infected with it. The Palesmen began to 
realise themselves as part of the Irish nation, and in the 
fulness of time they declared themselves Separatists. While 
this process was slowly accomplishing itself, the authentic 



24 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

voice of Ireland is to be sought in her literature. And that 
literature is a Separatist literature. The "secret songs" of 
the dispossessed Irish are the most fiercely Separatist utter- 
ances in any literature. Not until Mitchel did Anglo-Irish 
literature catch up that Irish vehemence. The poet of the 
"Eoman Vision" sang of the Ireland that was to be : 

"No man shall be bound unto England 
Nor hold friendship with dour Scotsmen, 
There shall be no place in Ireland for outlanders, 
Nor any recognition for the English speech." 

The prophetic voice of Mitchel seems to ring in this : 

"The world hath conquered, the wind hath scattered 

like dust 
Alexander, Caesar, and all that shared their sway, 
Tara is grass, and behold how Troy lieth low, — 
And even the English, perchance their hour will come !" 

An unknown poet, seeing the corpse of an Englishman hanging 
on a tree, sings: 

"Good is thy fruit, O tree ! 
The luck of thy fruit on every bough ! 
Would that the trees of Inisfail 
Were full of thy fruit every day !" 

The poet of the "Druimfhionn Donn Dilis" cries : 

"The English I'd rend as I'd rend an old brogue, 
And that's how I'd win me the Druimfhionn Donn Og !" 

I do not defend this blood-thirstiness any more than I apologise 
for it. I simply point it out as the note of a literature. 

Finally, when the poet of the "Roisin Dubh" declares that 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 25 

"The Erne shall rise in rude torrents, hills shall 

be rent, 
The sea shall roll in red waves, and blood be 

poured out, 
Every mountain glen in Ireland, and the bogs 
shall quake," 

is it to be supposed that these apocalyptic disturbances are to 
usher in merely a statutory legislation subordinate to the 
imperial parliament at Westminster whose supreme authority 
over Ireland shall remain unimpaired "anything in this Act 
notwithstanding" ? 

The student of Irish affairs who does not know Irish 
literature is ignorant of the awful intensity of the Irish desire 
for Separation as he is ignorant of one of the chief forces which 
make Separation inevitable. 

V. 

The first man who spoke, or seemed to speak, for Ireland 
and who was not a Separatist was Henry Grattan. And it 
was against Henry Grattan's Constitution that Wolfe Tone 
and the United Irishmen rose. Thus the Pale made common 
cause with the Gael and declared itself Separatist. It will 
be conceded that Wolfe Tone was a Separatist: he is The 
Separatist. It will be conceded that Robert Emmet was a 
Separatist. O'Connell was not a Separatist ; but, as the United 
Irishmen revolted against Grattan, Young Ireland revolted 
against O'Connell. And Young Ireland, in its final develop- 
ment, was Separatist. To Young Ireland belong three of the 
great Separatist voices. After Young Ireland the Fenians; 
and it will be admitted that the Fenians were Separatists. 
They guarded themselves against future misrepresentation by 
calling themselves the Irish Republican Brotherhood, 

It thus appears that Ireland has been Separatist up to the 
beginning of the generation that is now growing old. Separa- 



26 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

tism, in fact, is the national position. Whenever an Irish 
leader has taken up a position different from the national 
position he has been repudiated by the next generation. The 
United Irishmen repudiated Grattan. The Young Irelanders 
repudiated O'Connell. The Irish Volunteers have repudiated 
Mr. Redmond. 

The chain of the Separatist tradition has never once 
snapped during the centuries. Veterans of Kinsale were in the 
'41; veterans of Benburb followed Sarsiield. The poets kept 
the fires of the nation burning from Limerick to Dungannon. 
Napper Tandy of the Volunteers was Napper Tandy of the 
United Irishmen. The Russell of 1803 was the Russel of 1798. 
The Robert Holmes of '98 and 1803 lived to be a Young 
Irelander. Three Young Irelanders were the founders of 
Fenianism. The veterans of Fenianism stand today with the 
Irish Volunteers. So the end of the Separatist tradition is not 
yet. 

VI. 

It would be very instructive to examine in its breadth and 
depth, in its connotations as well as its denotations, the Irish 
definition of freedom; and I propose to do this in a sequel to 
the present essay. For my immediate purpose it is sufficient 
to state that definition merely as a principle involving essen- 
tially the idea of Independence, Separation, a distinct and un- 
fettered national existence. 

The conception of an Irish nation has been developed in 
modern times chiefly by four great minds. On a little reflection 
one comes to see that what has been contributed by other 
minds has been almost entirely by way of explanation and 
illustration of what has been laid down by the four master 
minds ; that the four have been the Fathers, and that the others 
are just their commentarists. Accordingly, when I have named 
the four names, there will be hardly any need to name any 
other names. Indeed, it will be difficult to think of names that 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 27 

can be named in the same breath with these, difficult to think 
of men who have reached anything like the same stature or who 
have stretched out even half as far. 

The names are those of Theobald Wolfe Tone, Thomas 
Davis, James Fintan Lalor, and John Mitchel. 

It is a question here of political thinkers, not of mere poli- 
tical leaders. O'Connell was a more effective political leader 
than either Lalor or Mitchel, but no one gives O'Connell a 
place in the history of political thought. He did not propound, 
he did not even attempt to propound, any body of political 
truths. He was a political strategist of extraordinary ability, 
a rhetorician of almost superhuman power. But we owe no 
political doctrine to O'Connell except the obviously untrue 
doctrine that liberty is too dearly purchased at the price of a 
single drop of blood. The political position of O'Connell — his 
falling back on the treaty of 1782-3 — was not the statement of 
any national principle, the embodiment of any political truth, — 
it was an able, though as it happened, unsuccessful, strategical 
move. 

Parnell must be considered. If one had to add a fifth to 
the four I have named, the fifth would inevitably be Parnell. 
Now Parnell was less a political thinker than an embodied 
conviction ; a flame that seared, a sword that stabbed. He de- 
liberately disclaimed political theories, deliberately confined 
himseK to political action. He did the thing that lay nearest 
to his hand, struck at the English with such weapons as were 
available. His instinct was a Separatist instinct; and, far 
from being prepared to accept Home Rule as a "final settle- 
ment between the two nations," he was always careful to make 
it clear that, whether Home Rule came or did not come, the 
way must be left open for the achievement of the greater thing. 
In 1885 he said : 

"It is given to none of us to forecast the future, and just 
as it is impossible for us to say in what way or by what means 
the national question may be settled — in what way full justice 
may be done to Ireland — so it is impossible for us to say to 



'28 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

what extent that justice should be done. We cannot ask for 
less than the restitution of Grattan's Parliament, with its im- 
poHant privileges and wide and far-reaching constitution. We 
cannot, under the British constitution, ask for more than the 
restitution of Grattan's Parliament, but no man has a right 
to fix the boundary of the march of a nation. No man has a 
right to say ''Thus far shalt thou go, and no further" ; and we 
have never attempted to fix the ne plus ultra to the progress 
of Ireland's nationhood, and we never shall. But, gentlemen, 
while we leave these things to time, circumstances, and the 
future, we must each one of us resolve in our own hearts that 
we shall at all times do everything that within us lies to obtain 
for Ireland the fullest measure of her rights. In this way we 
shall avoid difficulties and contentions amongst each other. In 
this way we shall not give up anything which the future may 
put in favor of our country; and while we struggle today for 
that which may seem possible for us without combination, we 
must struggle for it with the proud consciousness that we shall 
not do anything to hinder or prevent better men who may come 
after us from gaining better things than those for which we 
now contend." 

And again, in the same year : 

"Ireland a nation! Ireland has been a nation: she is a 
nation; and she shall be a nation. . . . England will respect 
you in proportion as you and we respect ourselves. They will 
not give anything to Ireland out of justice or righteousness. 
They will concede you your liberties and your rights when they 
must and no sooner. . . . We can none of us do more than 
strive for that which may seem attainable to-day; but we 
ought at the same time to recollect that we should not impede 
or hamper the march of our nation; and although our pro- 
gramme may be limited and small, it should be such a one as 
shall not prevent hereafter the fullest realisation of the hopes 
of Ireland; and we shall, at least if we keep this principle in 
mind, have this consolation that, while we may have done 
something to enable Ireland in some measure to retain her posi- 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 29- 

tion as a nation, to strengthen her position as a nation, we shall 
have done nothing to hinder others who may come after us. 
from taking up the work with perhaps greater strength, ability, 
power, and advantages than we possess, and from pushing to 
that glorious and happy conclusion which is embodied in the 
words of the toast which I now ask you to drink — 'Ireland sl 
nation !' " 

These words justify me in summoning the pale and angry 
ghost of Parnell to stand beside the ghosts of Tone and Davis 
and Lalor and Mitchel. If words mean anything, these mean 
that to Parnell the final and inevitable and infinitely desirable 
goal of Ireland was Separation ; and that those who thought it 
prudent and feasible, as he did, to proceed to Separation by 
Home Rule must above all things do nothing that might impair 
the Separatist position or render the future task of the Separa- 
tists more difficult. Of Parnell it may be said with absolute 
truth that he never surrendered the national position. His suc- 
cessors have surrendered it. They have writtea on his monu- 
ment in Dublin those noble words of his, that no man has a 
right to fix the boundary of the march of a nation; and then 
they have accepted the Home Rule Act as "a final settlement" 
between Ireland and England. It is as if a man were to write 
on a monument ''I believe in God and in Life Everlasting" and 
then to sell his chance of Heaven to the Evil One for a purse, 
not of gold, but of I. O. U.'s. 

If I could think of any other name that, with due regard 
for proportion, could be named with the great names, I should 
name it and proceed to examine its claims. But I can think 
of no other name. I can think of heroic leaders like Emmet; 
I can think of brilliant rhetoricians like Meagher; I can think 
of able and powerful publicists like Duffy ; I can think of secret 
organisers like Stephens: and all these were Separatist. But 
I cannot think of anyone who has left behind him a body of 
teaching that requires to be examined. Emmet's mind was as 
great as any of the four minds except Tone's ; but we have not 
its fruits; only an indication of its riches in his speech from the- 



30 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

dock, and of its strength and sanity in the draft proclamation 
for his Provisional Government. 

I can think, again, of three great political thinkers of 
Anglo-Ireland before Tone : Berkeley, Swift, and Burke. And 
from the writings of these three I could construct the case for 
Irish Separatism. But this would be irrelevant to my purpose. 
I am seeking to find, not those who have thought most wisely 
about Ireland, but those who have thought most authentically 
for Ireland, the voices that have come out of the Irish struggle 
itself. And those voices, subject to what I have said as to 
Parnell, are the voices of Tone, of Davis, of Lalor, of Mitchel. 

Let us see what they have said. 



VII. 



First, Tone. Of 1790 : 

"I made speedily what was to me a great discovery, though 
I might have found it in Swift and Molyneux, that the 
influence of England was the radical vice of our Government, 
and consequently that Ireland would never be either free, 
prosperous, or happy until she was independent, and that 
independence was unattainable whilst the connection with Eng- 
land lasted." 

Of 1791 : 

"It (a communication from Russell) immediately set me 
on thinking more seriouslj'^ than I had yet done upon the state 
of Ireland. I soon formed my theory, and on that theory I 
have invariably acted ever since. 

"To subvert the tyranny of our execrable Government, to 
break the connection with England, the never failing source 
of all our political evils, and to assert the independence of my 
country — these were my objects. To unite the whole people of 
Ireland, to abolish the memory of all past dissensions, and to 
substitute the common name of Irishman in the place of the 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 31 

denominations of Protestant, Catholic, and Dissenter — these 
were my means." 

I hold all Irish nationalism to be implicit in these words. 
Davis was to make explicit certain things here implicit, Lalor 
certain other things; Mitchel was to thunder the whole in 
words of apocalyptic wrath and splendor. But the Credo is 
here: "I believe in One Irish Nation and that Free." 

And before his judges Tone thus testified : 

''I mean not to give you the trouble of bringing judicial 
proof to convict me, legally, of having acted in hostility to the 
Government of his Britannic Majesty in Ireland. I admit the 
fact. From my earliest youth I have regarded the connection 
between Ireland and Great Britain as the curse of the Irish 
nation, and felt convinced that, while it lasted, this country 
could never be free nor happy. My mind has been confirmed 
in this opinion by the experience of every succeeding year, and 
the conclusions which I have drawn from every fact before my 
eyes. In consequence, I determined to apply all the powers 
which my individual efforts could move in order to separate the 
two countries." 

Next Davis : 

"... Will she (England) allow us, for good or ill, to 
govern ourselves, and see if we cannot redress our own griefs. 
'No, never, never,' she says, 'though all Ireland cried for it — 
never ! Her fields shall be manured with the shattered limbs of 
her sons, and her hearths quenched in their blood; but never, 
while England has a ship or a soldier, shall Ireland be free.' 

"And this is your answer? We shall see — we shall see! 

"And now, Englishmen, listen to us ! Though you were to- 
morrow to give us the best tenures on earth — though you were 
to equalize Presbyterian, Catholic, and Episcopalian — though 
you were to give us the amplest representation in your Senate 
— though you were to restore our absentees, disencumber us 
of your debt, and redress every one of our fiscal wrongs — and 
though, in addition to all this, you plundered the treasuries of 
the world to lay gold at our feet, and exhausted the resources 



32 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

of your genius to do us worship and honor — still we tell you — 
we tell you, in the names of liberty and country — we tell you, 
in the name of enthusiastic hearts, thoughtful souls, and fear- 
less spirits — we tell you, by the past, the present, and the 
future, we would spurn your gifts, if the condition were that 
Ireland should remain a province. We tell you, and all whom 
it may concern, come what may — bribery or deceit, justice, 
policy, or war — we tell you, in the name of Ireland, that Ireland 
shall be a Nation !" 

Lest it may be pretended (as it has been pretended) that 
the nationhood thus claimed in the name of Ireland by this 
passionate Nationalist was a mere statutory ''nationhood," 
federalism or something less, I quote a passage which makes it 
clear that Davis (loyally though he supported the official 
policy of the Nation, which at that stage did not go beyond 
Kepeal) was thinking all the time of a sovereign independent 
Ireland. Urging the need of foreign alliances for Ireland, he 
writes (the italics are Davis's) : 

"When Ireland is a nation she will not, with her vast 
population* and her military character, require such alliances 
as a security against an English re-conquest; but they will be 
useful in banishing any dreams of invasion which might other- 
wise haunt the brain of our old enemy." 

Elsewhere Davis sums up the national position in a 
sentence worthy of Tone : 

"Ireland's aspiration is for unbounded nationality." 

Next Lalor : 

"Repeal, in its vulgar meaning, I look on as utterly im- 
practicable by any mode of action whatever; and the constitu- 
tion of '82 was absurd, worthless, and worse than worthless. 
The English Government will never concede or surrender to 
any species of moral force whatsoever; and the country-peas- 
antry will never arm and fight for it — neither will I. If I am 
to stake life and fame it must assuredly be for something better 



Nearly 9,000,000 then. 
\ 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 33 

and greater, more likely to last, more likely to succeed, and 
better worth success. And a stronger passion, a higher purpose, 
a nobler and more needful enterprise is fermenting in the hearts 
of the people. A mightier question moves Ireland to-day than 
that of merely repealing the Act of Union. Not the constitu- 
tion that Wolfe Tone died to abolish, but the constitution that 
Tone died to obtain — independence ; full and absolute independ- 
ence for this island, and for every man within this island. Into 
no movement that would leave an enemy's garrison in posses- 
sion of all our lands, masters of our liberties, our lives, and all 
our means of life and happiness — into no such movement will 
a single man of the greycoats enter with an armed hand, what- 
ever the town population may do. On a wider fighting field, 
with stronger positions and greater resources than are afforded 
by the paltry question of Repeal, must we close for our final 
struggle with England, or sink and surrender. 

"Ireland her own — Ireland her own, and all therein, from 
the sod to the sky. The soil of Ireland for the people of Ireland, 
to have and hold from God alone who gave it — to have and to 
hold to them and to their heirs for ever, without suit or service, 
faith or fealty, rent or render, to any power under Heaven." 

And again : 

''Not to repeal the Union, then, but the conquest — not to 
disturb or dismantle the Empire, but to abolish it utterly for 
ever — not to fall back on '82, but to act up to '48 — not to 
resume or restore an old constitution, but to found a new nation 
and raise up a free people, and strong as well as free, and 
secure as well as strong, based on a peasantry rooted like rocks 
in the soil of the land — this is my object, as I hope it is 3 ours ; 
and this, you may be assured, is the easier as it is the nobler 
and more pressing enterprise." 

And yet again : 

"In the case of Ireland now there is but one fact to deal 
with, and one question to be considered. The fact is this — that 
there are at present in occupation of our country some 40,000 
armed men, in the livery and service of England; and the 



34 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

question is — how best and soonest to kill and capture those 
40,000 men." 

Lastly, Mitchel takes up his hymn of hate against the 
Empire : 

^"The Ego. — And do you read Ireland's mind in the canting 
of O'Connell's son ? or in the sullen silence of a gagged and dis- 
armed people? Tell me not of O'Connell's son. His father 
begat him in moral force, and in patience and perseverance did 
his mother conceive him. I swear to you there are blood and 
brain in Ireland yet, as the world one day shall know. God ! 
let me live to see it. 

"On that great day of the Lord, when the kindreds and 
tongues and nations of the old earth shall give their banners 
to the wind, let this poor carcass have but breath and strength 
enough to stand under Ireland's immortal Green ! 

"Doppelganger. — Do you allude to the battle of Armaged- 
don ? I know you have been reading the Old Testament of late. 

"The Ego. — Yes. 'Who is this that cometh from Edom; 
with dyed garments from Bozrah ? This that is glorious in his 
apparel travelling in the garments of his strength ? Wherefore 
art thou red in thine apparel, and thy garments like him that 
treadeth in the wine vat ? I have trodden the wine press alone, 
and of the people there was none with me : for I will tread them 
in mine anger and trample them in my fury, and their blood 
shall be sprinkled upon my garments, and I will stain all my 
raiment. For the day of vengeance is in my heart.' Also an 
aspiration of King David haunts my memory when I think of 
Ireland and her wrongs : 'That thy foot may tte dipped in the 
"blood of thine enemies, and that the tongue of thy dogs may te 
red through the same.' " 

Thus Tone, thus Davis, thus Lalor, thus Mitchel, thus 
Parnell. Methinks I have raised some ghosts that will take a 
little laying. 



THE SEPAKATIST IDEA* 



P. H. Pearse, 

St. Enda's College, 
Kathfarnham, 

1st. February, 1916. 



I. 



IN stating a little while ago the Irish definition of freedom, 
I said that it would be well w^orth while to examine that 
definition in its breadth and depth, in its connotations as 
well as in its denotations, contenting myself for the moment 
with making clear its essential idea of Independence, Separa- 
tion, a distinct and unfettered national existence. And I said 
that I proposed to do this in a sequel. Such a sequel is neces- 
sary, for, while the statement that national freedom means a 
distinct and unfettered national existence is a true and 
complete statement of the nature of national freedom, it is not 
a sufficient revelation of the minds that have developed the 
conception of freedom among us Irish, not sufficiently quick 
with their thought nor sufficiently passionate with their desire. 
Freedom is so splendid a thing that one cannot worthily state 
it in the terms of a definition; one has to write it in some 
flaming symbol or to sing it in music riotous with the uproar of 
heaven. A Danton and a Mitchel can speak more adequately of 
freedom than a Voltaire and a Burke, for they have drunk 
more deeply of that wine with which God inebriates the 



♦(Preface — This is the first of the pamphlets in which I propose to 
develop the contention put forward in "Ghosts," the whole forming a 
continuous argument. The further pamphlets of the series will be 
entitled "The Spiritual Nation" and "The Sovereign People," respec- 
tively.) 



36 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

votaries of vision. But even the sublimest things, the Trinity 
and the Incarnation, can be stated in terms of philosophy, and 
it is needful to do this now and then, though such a statement 
in no wise affects the spiritual fact which one either feels or 
does not feel. So, it is sometimes necessary to state what 
nationality is, what freedom, though one's statement may not 
reveal the awful beauty of his nation's soul to a single man or 
move a single village to put up its barricade. 

The purpose, then, of such statements? At least they 
define the truth, and enable men to see who holds the truth and 
who hugs the falsehood. For there is an absolute truth in 
such matters, and the truth is ascertainable. The truth is old, 
and it has been handed down to us by our fathers. It is not a 
new thing, devised to meet the exigencies of a situation. That 
is the definition of an expedient. 

Now the truth as to what a nation's nationality is, what 
a nation's freedom, is not to be found in the statute-book of 
the nation's enemy. It is to be found in the books of the 
nation's fathers. 

II. 

I have named Tone and Davis and Lalor and Mitchel as 
the four among us moderns who have chiefly developed the 
conception of an Irish nation. Others, I have said, have for 
the most part only interpreted and illustrated what has been 
taught by these; these are the Fathers and the rest are just 
their commentarists. And I need not repeat here my reasons 
for naming no other with these unless the other be Parnell, 
whom I name tentatively as the man who saw most deeply 
and who spoke most splendidly for the Irish nation since the 
great seers and speakers. I go on to examine what these have 
taught of Irish freedom. And first as to Tone. He stands 
first in point of time, and first in point of greatness. Indeed 
he is, as I believe, the greatest man of our nation ; the greatest- 
hearted and the greatest-minded. 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 37 

We have to cousider here Tone the thinker rather than 
Tone the man of action. The greatest of our men of action 
since Hugh O'Neill, he is the greatest of all our political 
thinkers. His greatness, both as a man and as a thinker, con- 
sists in his sheer reality. There is no froth of rhetoric, no 
dilution of sentimentality^ in Tone; he has none even of the 
noble oratoric quality of a Mitchel. A man of extraordinarily 
deep emotion, he nevertheless thought with relentless logic, 
and his expression in exposition or argument is always the due 
and inevitable garb of his thought. He was a great visionary; 
but, like all the greatest visionaries, he had a firm grip upon 
realities, he was fundamentally sane. 

It is necessary at times to insist on Tone's intellectual 
austerity, because the man's humanity was so gracious that his 
human side constantly overshadows, for us as for his contem- 
poraries, his grave intellectual side. Most men of his greatness 
are loved at best by a few, feared or disliked or mistrusted by 
the many. Tone was one of the extremely rare great men whose 
greatness is crowned by those gifts of humility and sweetness 
that compel all'ection. Some men are misunderstood because 
they are disliked ; a few men are in danger of being misunder- 
stood because they are loved. If the greatest thing in Tone 
was his heroic soul, the soul that was gay in death and defeat, 
the second greatest thing was his austere and piercing intellect. 
That intellect has dominated Irish political thought for over 
a century. It has given us our political definitions and values. 
Constantly we refer doctrines and leaders and policies to its 
standards, measuring them by the mind of Tone as an Ameri- 
can measures men and policies by the minds that shaped the 
Declaration of Independence. Tone's mind was in a very true 
sense a revolutionary mind. The spokesmen of the French 
Eevolution itself did not base things more fundamentally on 
essential right and justice than Tone did, did not pierce through 
outer strata to a firmer bedrock than he found. And it was 
an original mind. Influenced no doubt by contemporary minds, 
and responsive to every thought-wave that vibrated in either 



38 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

hemisphere, Tone for the most part worked out his own politi- 
cal system in his own way. He did not inherit or merely accept 
his principles ; he thought himself into them. 

Tone's first political utterance was a pamphlet in defence 
of the Whig Club, entitled "A Review of the last Session of 
Parliament" (1790). Of this pamphlet he writes in his 
Autobiography : 

"... Though I was very far from entirely approving the 
system of the Whig Club, and much less their principles and 
motives, yet, seeing them at the time the best constituted polit- 
ical body which the country afforded, and agreeing with most of 
their positions, though my own private opinions went infinitely 
farther, I thought I could venture on their defence without 
violating my consistency." 

The pamphlet contains no definitely Separatist teaching. 
Before the end of the year, however. Tone had found his voice. 
It is a Separatist that speaks in ''The Spanish War" (1790), 
but a cautious Separatist, one who is feeling his way. Tone 
himself describes the expansion of his views which had taken 
place between the publication of his first and his second pam- 
phlets : 

"A closer examination into the history of my native 
country had very considerably extended my views, and, as I 
was sincerely and honestly attached to her interests, I soon 
found reason not to regret that the Whigs had not thought me 
an object worthy of their cultivation. I made speedily what 
was to me a great discovery, though I might have found it in 
Swift and Molyneux, that the influence of England was the 
radical vice of our Government, and consequently that Ireland 
would never be either free, prosperous, or happy until she was 
independent, and that independence was unattainable whilst 
the connection with England existed." 

Accordingly : 

"On the appearance of a rupture with Spain, I wrote a 
pamphlet to prove that Ireland was not bound by the declara- 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 39 

tion of war, but might, and ought, as an independent nation, to 
stipulate for a neutrality. In examining this question, I ad- 
vanced the question of separation, with scarcely any reserve, 
much less disguise; but the public mind was by no means so 
far advanced as I was, and my pamphlet made not the slightest 
impression." 

The pamphlet, in fact, tended to prove the impossibility 
of Grattan's constitution, 1, e., of the co-existence of a British 
connection with a sovereign Irish Parliament. It did not 
propound this in so many words, but the logical conclusion 
from its extraordinarily able and subtle argument is that no 
^'half-way house" is possible as a permanent solution of the 
issue between Ireland and England. There were and are only 
two alternatives : an enslaved Ireland and a free Ireland. A 
"dual monarch}^" is, in the nature of things, only a temporary 
expedient. 

In 1790 Tone met Thomas Russell. Theirs was the most 
memorable of Irish friendships. It was in conversations and 
correspondence with Russell that Tone's political ideas reached 
their maturity. When he next speaks it is with plenary mean- 
ing and clear definition. Towards the end of 1790 he made his 
first attempt In political organisation. He founded a club of 
seven or eight members ''eminent for their talents and 
patriotism and who had already more or less distinguished 
themselves by their literary productions." It was a failure, 
and the failure satisfied Tone that ''men of genius, to be of use, 
must not be collected in numbers." In 1791 Russell went to 
Belfast. An attempt of Russell's to induce the Belfast Volun- 
teers to adopt a declaration in favor of Catholic emancipation, 
which Tone had prepared at his request, was unsuccessful. 
Russell wrote to Tone an account of the discussion, and, says 
Tone: 

"It immediately set me on thinking more seriously than I 
had yet done upon the state of Ireland. I soon formed my 
theor}^, and on that theory I have invariably acted ever since. 

"To subvert the tyranny of our execrable Government, to 



40 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

break the connection with England, the never-failing source 
of all our political evils, and to assert the independence of my 
country — these were my objects. To unite the whole people of 
Ireland, to abolish the memory of all past dissensions, and to 
substitute the common name of Irishman in place of the den- 
ominations of Protestant, Catholic, and Dissenter — these were 
my means." 

I have said that I hold all Irish nationalism to be im- 
plicit in these words. Davis was to make explicit certain 
things here implicit, Lalor certain other things. But the Credo 
is here : "I believe in One Irish Nation and that Free." 

Tone had convinced himself as to the end and the means. 
And now for work : 

"I sat down accordingly, and wrote a pamphlet addressed 
to the Dissenters, and which I entitled ^An Argument on behalf 
of the Catholics of Ireland,' the object of which was to convince 
them that they and the Catholics had but one common interest 
and one common enemy; that the depression and slavery of 
Ireland was produced and perpetuated by the divisions exist- 
ing between them, and that, consequently, to assert the inde- 
pendence of their country, and their own individual liberties, 
it was necessary to forget all former feuds, to consolidate the 
entire strength of the whole nation, and to form for the future 
but one people." 

This pamphlet, signed "A Northern Whig," gave Tone his 
place in Irish politics. The Catholic leaders approached him 
and commenced the connection which led ultimately to his 
selection as their agent; the Volunteers of Belfast elected him 
an honorary member of their corps. He was soon afterwards 
invited to Belfast, where he founded, with Russell, Neilson, the 
Simmses, Sinclair, and Mac Cabe, the first club of United Irish- 
men. Tone wrote for the United Irishmen the following 
declaration : 

"In the present great era of reform when unjust govern- 
ments are falling in every quarter of Europe; when religious 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 41 

persecution is compelled to abjure her tyranny over conscience ; 
when the Rights of Man are ascertained in Theory and that 
Theory substantiated by Practice; when antiquity can no 
longer defend absurd and oppressive forms against the common 
sense and common interests of mankind ; when all government 
is acknowledged to originate from the people, and to be so far 
only obligatory as it protects their rights and promotes their 
welfare ; we think it our duty as Irishmen to come forward and 
state what we feel to be our heavy grievance, and what we 
know to be its effectual remedy. 

"We have no National Government; we are ruled by Eng- 
lishmen and the servants of Englishmen, whose object is the 
interest of another country; whose instrument is corruption; 
whose strength is the weakness of Ireland ; and these men have 
the whole of the power and patronage of the country as means 
to seduce and subdue the honesty and the spirit of her repre- 
sentatives in the legislature. Such an extrinsic jjower, acting 
with uniform force in a direction too frequently opposite to 
the true line of our obvious interests, can be resisted with 
effect solely b^' unanimity, decision, and spirit in the people, 
qualities which may be exerted most legally, constitutionally, 
and efficaciously by that great measure essential to the pros- 
perity and freedom of Ireland — an equal Representation of all 
the People in Parliament. . . . "* 

The declaration was not openly Separatist. Tone, how- 
ever, avows that, while not yet definitely a republican, his 
ultimate goal, even as early as 1791, was Separation : the union 
of Irishmen was to be but a means to an end. Commenting 
on the foundation (9th November, 1791) of the Dublin Club 
of United Irishmen, in which the republican Tandy co-operated 
with him. Tone writes : 

*'For my own part, I think it right to mention that, at 



*(I know of no exposition of the philosophy, concretely, succinctly, 
expressed, of the bane of English rule in Ireland and the means em- 
ployed to degrade Irishmen, equal to the above of Tone. — Editor.) 



42 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

this time the establishment of a Republic was not the immed- 
iate objeejfc of my speculations. My object was to secure the 
independence of my country under any form of government, to 
which I was led by a hatred of England so deeply rooted in my 
nature that it was rather an instinct than a principle. I left 
to others, better qualified for the inquiry, the investigation and 
merits of the different forms of government, and I contented 
myself with laboring on my own system, which was luckily 
in perfect coincidence as to its operation with that of those 
men who viewed the question on a broader and juster scale 
than I did at the time I mention." 

Thus, Tone in November, 1791, had not yet settled his 
views on abstract theories of government, but on the practical 
business of separating Ireland from England his resolve was 
fixed and unshakable. 

In June, 1791, there had been issued a secret Manifesto to 
the Friends of Freedom in Ireland which is attributed to Tone 
in collaboration with Neilson and others. Tone himself makes 
no reference to this document in his Autobiography. If it is 
really his it is the nearest approach to a formulation of the 
theory of freedom which we have from the mind of this essen- 
tially practical statesman. Whether it be Tone's or another's, 
it is one of the noblest utterances of the age and is a document 
of primary importance in the history of Ireland. It may be 
described as the first manifesto of modern Irish democracy. 
It bases the Irish claim to freedom on the bedrock foundation 
of human rights : 

"This society is likely to be a means the most powerful for 
the promotion of a great end. What end? The Rights of Man 
in Ireland. The greatest happiness of the greatest number in 
this island, the inherent and indefeasible claims of every free 
nation to rest in this nation — the will and the power to be 
happy, to pursue the common weal as an individual pursues 
his private welfare, and to stand in insulated independence, an 
imperatorial people. 

"The greatest happiness of the Greatest Number. — On the 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 43 

rock of this principle let this society rest; by this let it judge 
and determine every political question, and whatever is neces- 
sary for this end let it not be accounted hazardous, but rather 
our interest, our duty, our glory, and our common religion : 
The Rights of Man are the Rights of God, and to vindicate the 
one is to maintain the other. We must be free in order to serve 
Him whose service is perfect freedom. . . . 

" *Dieu et mon Droit' (God and my right) is the motto of 
kings. 'Dieu et la liberte (God and liberty), exclaimed 
Voltaire when he beheld Franklin, his fellow-citizen of the 
world. 'Dieu et nos Droits' (God and our rights) — let every 
Irishman cry aloud to each other the cry of mercy, of justice 
and of victory." 

The Rights of Man in Ireland is almost an adequate defini- 
tion of Irish freedom. And the historic claim of Ireland has 
never been more worthily stated than in these words : ''The 
inherent atid indefeasible claims of every free nation to rest in 
this nation — the will and the power to he happy, to pursue the 
common weal as an individual pursues his private welfare, and 
to stand in insulated independence, an imperatorial people.'^ 

The deep and radical nature of Tone's revolutionary work, 
the subtlety and power of the man himself, cannot be grasped 
unless it is clearly remembered that this is the secret manifesto 
of thfe movement of which the carefully constitutional declara- 
tion of the United Irishmen is the public manifesto. Tone 
himself, in a letter to Russell at the beginning of 1792, admits 
his ulterior designs while at the same time laying stress on the 
necessity of caution in public utterances. Referring to the 
declaration of the United Irishmen, he says : 

''The foregoing contains my true and sincere opinion of 
the state of this country, so far as in the present juncture it 
may be advisable to publish it. They certainly fall short of the 
truth, but truth itself must sometimes condescend to temporise. 
My unalterable opinion is that the bane of Irish prosperity is in 
the influence of England : I believe that influence will ever be 
extended while the connection between the countries con- 



44 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

tinues;* nevertheless, as I know that opinion is, for the present, 
too hardj, though a very little time may establish it universally, 
I have not made it a party of the resolutions, I have only pro- 
posed to set up a reformed parliament, as a barrier against that 
mischief which every honest man that will open his eyes must 
see in every instance overbears the interest of Ireland : I have 
not said one word that looks like a wish for separation, though 
I give it to you and your friends as my most decided opinion 
that such an event would be a regeneration to this country." 

In 1792 Tone became agent to the General Committee of 
the Catholics. Before the end of the year his dream of a union 
between the Catholics and the Dissenters was an accomplished 
fact. In December the Catholic Convention met. Catching 
Tone's spirit, it demanded complete emancipation. The Gov- 
ernment proposed a compromise to the leaders. Tone was 
against any compromise, but the Catholic leaders yielded. 
''Merchants, I see, make bad revolutionists," commented Tone. 
The Act of 1793, admitting Catholics to the Parliamentary 
franchise, marks the end of Tone's "constitutional" period. He 
pressed on towards Separation, adopting revolutionary 
methods. The United Irishmen were reorganised as a secret 
association, with "a Kepublican Government and Separation 
from England" as its aims. In 1795 Tone, compromised by his 
relations with Jackson, left Ireland for America. It was out 
of settled policy that at this stage he chose exile rather than 
a contest with the Government. He had already conceived the 
idea of appealing for help to the French Eepublic. Shortly 
before ha left Dublin he went out with Russell to Rathf arnham, 
to see Thomas Addis Emmet. 

"As we walked together into town I opened my plan to 
them both. I told them that I considered my compromise with 
Government to extend no further than the banks of the Dela- 



*(How prophetic, wlien one examines Ireland's history during the 
nineteenth century — the frightful famines, semi-extermination of the 
population, and the unreckoned agonies of the whole nation. — Editor.) 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 45 

ware, and that the moment I landed I was free to follow any 
plan which might suggest itself to me, for the emancipation of 
my country. ... I then proceeded to tell them that my inten- 
tion was, immediately on my arrival in Philadelphia, to wait 
on the French Minister, to detail to him, fully, the situation of 
affairs in Ireland, to endeavour to obtain a recommendation to 
the French Government, and, if I succeeded so far, to leave my 
family in America, and to set off instantly for Paris, and apply, 
in the name of my country, for the assistance of France, to 
enable us to assert our independence." 

To the fulfilment of this purpose Tone devoted the three 
years of life that remained to him. He landed in France in 
1796. The notes in his Journal of his conferences with the 
representatives of the French Government and the two master- 
ly memorials which he submitted to the Executive Directory 
remain the fullest and most practical statement, not only of the 
necessity of Separation but of the means by which Separation 
is to be attained, that has been made by any Irishman. In the 
concluding passage of his second memorial Tone sums up as 
follows ; 

"I submit to the wisdom of the French Government that 
England is the implacable, inveterate, irreconcilable enemy of 
the Kepublic, which never can be in perfect security while that 
nation retains the dominion of the sea; that, in consequence, 
every possible effort should be made to humble her pride and to 
reduce her power; that it is in Ireland, and in Ireland only, that 
she is vulnerable — a fact of the truth of which the French 
Government cannot be too strongly impressed; that by estab- 
lishing a free Republic in Ireland they attach to France a 
grateful ally whose cordial assistance, in peace and war, she 
might command, and who, from situation and produce, could 
most essentially serve her; that at the same time they cut off 
from England her most firm support, in losing which she is 
laid under insuperable difficulties in recruiting her army, and 
especially in equipping, victualling, and manning her navy, 
which, unless for the resources she drew from Ireland, she 



46 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

would be absolutely unable to do; that by these means — and, 
suffer me to add, Ijy these means only — her arrogance can be 
effectually humbled, and her enormous and increasing power 
at sea reduced within due bounds — an object essential, not only 
to France, but to all Europe ; that it is at least possible, by the 
measures mentioned, that not only her future resources, as to 
her navy, may be intercepted and cut off at the fountain head, 
but that a part of her fleet may be actually transferred to the 
Eepublic of Ireland; that the Irish people are united and pre- 
pared, and want but the means to begin ; that, not to speak of 
the policy or the pleasure of revenge in humbling a haughty 
and implacable rival, it is in itself a great and splendid act of 
generosity, worthy of the Eepublic, to rescue a whole nation 
from a slavery under which they have groaned for six hundred 
years; that it is for the glory of France, after emancipating 
Holland and receiving Belgium into her bosom, to establish 
one more free Eepublic in Europe ; that it is for her interest to 
cut off for ever, as she now may do, one half of the resources of 
England, and lay her under extreme difficulties in the employ- 
ment of the other. For all these reasons, in the name of justice, 
of humanity, of freedom, of my own country, and of France 
herself, I supplicate the Directory to take into consideration 
the state of Ireland ; and by granting her the powerful aid and 
protection of the Eepublic, to enable her at once to vindicate 
her liberty, to humble her tyrant, and to assume that inde- 
pendent station among the nations of the earth for which her 
soil, her productions and her position, her population and her 
spirit have designed her." 

Finally — after Bantry Bay, The Texel, and Lough Swilly 
— ^Tone before his judges thus testified to his faith as a Separa- 
tist: 

"I mean not to give you the trouble of bringing judicial 
proof to convict me, legally, of having acted in hostility to the 
Government of his Britannic Majesty in Ireland. I admit the 
fact. From my earliest youth, I have regarded the connection 
between Ireland and Great Britain as the curse of the Irish 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 47 

nation, and felt convinced that, whilst it lasted, this country 
could never be free nor happy. My mind has been confirmed in 
this opinion by the experience of every succeeding year, and the 
conclusions which I have drawn from every fact before my 
eyes. In consequence, I determined to apply all the powers 
which my individual efforts could move in order to separate 
the two countries. 

"That Ireland was not able, of herself, to throw off the 
yoke, I knew. I therefore sought for aid wherever it was to be 
found. In honorable poverty I rejected otters which, to a man 
in my circumstances, might be considered highly advantageous. 
I remained faithful to what I thought the cause of my country, 
and sought in the French Kepublic an ally to rescue three mil- 
lions of my countrymen from ..." 

Here the prisoner was interrupted by the President of the 
Court-Martial. 

III. 

In order to complete this brief study of Tone's teaching it 
is necessary to consider him as a democrat. And Tone, the 
greatest of modern Irish Separatists, is the first and greatest 
of modern Irish democrats. It was Tone that said : 

"Our independence must be had at all hazards. If the 
men of property will not support us, they must fall: we can 
support ourselves by the aid of that numerous and respectable 
class of the community — the men of no property." 

In this glorious appeal to Caesar modern Irish democracy 
has its origin. 

I have already quoted the secret Manifesto to the Friends 
of Freedom, attributed to Tone, in which the right to national 
freedom is made to rest on its true basis, the right to individual 
freedom. The abstract theory of freedom was not further de- 
veloped by Tone who devoted his life to the pursuit of a practi- 
cal object rather than to the working out of a philosophy. 
When, however, any question arose which involved the rela- 



48 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

tions of a democracy and an aristocracy, of the people and the 
gentry ("as they affect to call themselves"), of the ''men of no 
property" and the ''men of property," Tone's decision was 
instant and unerring. The people must rule; if the aristocracy 
make common cause with the people so much the better ; if not, 
woe to the aristocracy. One passage from his journal, under 
date April 27th, 1798, says all that need be said as to the prac- 
tical question of dealing with a hostile aristocracy in a national 
revolution : 

"What miserable slaves are the gentry of Ireland! The 
only accusation brought against the United Irishmen by their 
enemies, is that they wish to break the connection with Eng- 
land, or, in other words, to establish the independence of their 
country — an object in which surely the men of property are 
most interested. Yet the very sound of independence seems to 
have terrified them out of all sense, spirit, or honesty. If they 
had one drop of Irish blood in their veins, one grain of true 
courage or genuine patriotism in their hearts, they should have 
been the first to support this great object; the People would 
have supported them; the English government would never 
have dared to atttempt the measures they have since trium- 
phantly pursued, and continue to pursue; our Revolution 
would have been accomplished without a shock, or perhaps one 
drop of blood spilled ; which now can succeed, if it does suc- 
ceed, only by all the calamities of a most furious and sanguin- 
ary contest : for the war in Ireland, whenever it does take place, 
will not be an ordinary one. The armies will regard each other 
not as soldiers but as deadly enemies. Who, then, are to blame 
for this ? The United Irishmen, who set the question afloat, or 
the English government and their partisans, the Irish gentry, 
who resist it ? If independence be good for a country as liberty 
for an individual, the question will soon be decided. Why does 
England so pertinaciously resist our independence? Is it for 
love of us — is it because she thinks we are better as we are? 
That single argument, if it stood alone, should determine every 
honest Irishman. 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 49 

"But, it will be said, the United Irishmen extend their 
views farther; they go now to a distribution of property, and 
an agrarian law. I know not whether they do or no. I am sure 
in June, 1795, when I was forced to leave the country, they 
entertained no such ideas. If they have since taken root among 
them, the Irish gentry may accuse themselves. Even then they 
made themselves parties to the business : not content with dis- 
daining to hold communications with the United Irishmen, they 
were among the foremost of their persecutors; even those who 
were pleased to denominate themselves patriots were more 
eager to vilify, and, if they could, to degrade them, than the 
most devoted and submissive slaves of the English govern- 
ment What wonder if the leaders of the United Irishmen, 
finding themselves not only deserted, but attacked by those 
who, for every reason, should have been their supporters and 
fellow-laborers, felt themselves no longer called upon to ob- 
serve any measures with men only distinguished by the superior 
virulence of their persecuting spirit? If such men, in the 
issue, lose their property, they are themselves alone to blame, 
by deserting the first and most sacred of duties— the duty ta 
their country. They have incurred a wilful forfeiture by dii^ 
darning to occupy the station they might have held among the 
People, and which the People would have been glad to see them 
fill; they left a vacancy to be seized by those who had more 
courage, more sense, and more honesty; and not only so, but 
by this base and interested desertion they furnished their 
enemies with every argument of justice, policy, and interest, 
to enforce the system of confiscation. 



''The best that can be said in palliation of the conduct of 
the English party, is that they are content to sacrifice the 
liberty and independence of their country to the pleasure of 
revenge, and their own personal security. They see Ireland 
only in their rent rolls, their places, their patronage, and their 



50 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

pensions. There is not a man among them who, in the bottom 
of his soul, does not feel that he is a degraded being in com- 
parison of those whom he brands with the names of incendiar- 
ies and traitors. It is this stinging reflection which, amongst 
other powerful motives, is one of the most active in spurring 
them on to revenge. Their dearest interests, their warmest 
passions, are equally engaged. Who can forgive the man that 
forces him to confess that he is a voluntary slave, and that he 
has sold for money everything that should be most precious to 
an honorable heart? that he has trafficked in the liberties of 
his children and his own, and that he is hired and paid to com- 
mit a daily parricide on his country? Yet these are charges 
which not a man of that infamous caste can deny to himself 
before the sacred tribunal of his own conscience. At least the 
United Irishmen, as I have already said, have a grand, a 
sublime object in view. Their enemies have not as yet ven- 
tured, in the long catalogue of their accusations, to insert the 
-charge of interested motives. Whilst that is the case they 
may be feared and abhorred, but they can never be despised ; and 
I believe there are few men who do not look upon contempt as 
the most insufferable of all human evils. Can the English 
faction say as much? In vain do they crowd together, and 
think by their numbers to disguise or lessen their infamy. The 
public sentiment, the secret voice of their own corrupt hearts, 
has already condemned them. They see their destruction 
rapidly approaching, and they have the consciousness that 
when they fall no honest man will pity them. They shall 
perish like their own dung; those who have seen them shall 
say, Where are they?" 

Tone did not propose any general confiscation of private 
property other than the property of Englishmen in Ireland, 
and this only after proclamation to the English people, as dis- 
tinct from the English Government, stating the grounds of the 
action of the Irish nation and declaring their earnest desire 
to avoid the effusion of blood; if, after such proclamation, the 
English people supported the English Government in war upon 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 51 

Ireland, Tone held that the confiscation of English property 
"would then be an act of strict justice, as the English people 
would have made themselves parties to the war." Emmet's 
proposals in 1803 are a fuller and more detailed expression of 
the mind of revolutionary Ireland on the subject of property. 
The first decree drafted by Emmet for his Provisional Govern- 
ment was that ''tithes are forever abolished, and church lands 
are the property of the nation;" the second laid down that 
"from this date all transfers of landed property are prohibited, 
each person paying his rent until the National Government is 
established, the national will declared, and the courts of justice 
be organised ;" the third made a like provision with regard to 
the transfer of bonds and securities ; and the fourth decreed 
the confiscation of the property of Irishmen in the Militia, 
Yeomanry, or Volunteer corps who, after fourteen days, should 
be found in arms against the Republic. When we speak of 
men like Tone and Emmet as "visionaries" and "idealists"* we 
regard only one side of their minds. Both were extraordinarily 
able men of aff'airs, masters of all the details of the national, 
social, and economic positions in their day; and both would 
have been ruthless in revolution, shedding exactly as much 
blood as would have been necessary to their purpose. Both, 
however, were Nationalists first, and revolutionists only in so 
far as revolution was essential to the establishment of the 
nation. "We war not against property," said Emmet in his 
proclamation, "we war against no religious sect, we war not 
against past opinions or prejudices, — we war against English 
dominion." 

One is now in a position to sum up Tone's teaching in a 
series of propositions : 

1. The Irish Nation is One. 

2. The Irish Nation, like all Nations, has an indefeasible 
right to Freedom. 



*(So, too, Pearse himself and the men of Easter Week were termed 
by the impulsive and the sciolists. — Editor.) 



52 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

3. Freedom denotes Separation and Sovereignty. 

4. The right to National Freedom rests upon the right 
to Personal Freedom, and true National Freedom guarantees 
true Personal Freedom. 

5. The object of Freedom is the pursuit of the happiness 
of the Nation and of the individuals that compose the Nation. 

6. Freedom is necessary to the happiness and prosperity 
of the Nation. In the particular case of Ireland, Separation 
from England is necessary not only to the happiness and pros- 
perity but almost to the continued existence of Ireland, inas- 
much as the interests of Ireland and England are funda- 
mentally at variance, and while the two nations are connected 
England must necessarily predominate. 

7. The National Sovereignty implied in National Freedom 
holds good both externally and internally, i. e., the sovereign 
rights of the Nation are good as against all other nations and 
good as against all parts of the Nation. Hence — 

8. The Nation has jurisdiction over lives and property 
within the Nation. 

9. The People are the Nation. 

All this Tone taught, not in the dull pages of a treatise 
but in the living phrases that dropped from him in his conver- 
sation, in his correspondence, in his diaries, in his impassioned 
pleas for his nation to the Executive Directory of France. 
Some of the greatest teachers have been literary men only 
incidentally; but their teaching has none the less the splendor 
of great literary utterance. The masters of literature do not 
always label themselves. When a great soul utters a great 
truth have we not always great literature? That is why the 
true gospels of the world are always true literature. Those 
who have preached the divine worth of faith and justice and 
charity and freedom have done so in glorious and imperishable 
words ; and the reason is that God speaks through them. 

That God spoke to Ireland through Tone and through 
those who after Tone, have taken up his testimony, that Tone's 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 53 

teaching and theirs is true and great and that no other teach- 
ing as to Ireland has any truth or worthiness at all, is a thing 
upon which I stake all my mortal and all my immortal hopes. 
And I ask the men and women of my generation to stake their 
mortal and immortal hopes with me. 



THE SPIRITUAL NATION* 



P. H. Pearse, 

St. Enda's College, 
Ratharnham, 

13th February, 1916. 



I have said that all Irish nationality is implicit in the 
definition of Tone, and that later teachers have simply made 
one or other of its truths explicit. It was characteristic of 
Tone that he stated his case in terms of practical politics. But 
the statement was none the less a complete statement. To 
claim independence as the indefeasible right of Ireland is to 
claim everything for Ireland, all spiritual exaltation and all 
worldly pomp to which she is entitled. Independence one must 
understand to include spiritual and intellectual independence 
as well as political independence; or rather, true political 
independence requires spiritual and intellectual independence 
as its basis, or it tends to become unstable, a thing resting 
merely on interests which change with time and circumstance, 

I make a distinction between spiritual and intellectual 
independence corresponding to the distinction which exists 
between the spiritual and the intellectual parts in man. The 
distinction is not easy to express, but it is a real distinction. 
The soul is not the mind, though it acts by way of the mind, 
and it is through the mind one gets such glimpses of the soul 



* (Preface — This Tract continues and develops the argument 
commenced in "Ghosts," and pursued in "The Separatist Idea" . . . 
It is not to be taken as an attempt to represent the whole of Davis's 
mind or to summarise the whole of his teaching. I consider him here 
chiefly as one of the Separatist voices.) 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 55 

as are possible. Obviously, a great and beautiful soul may 
sometimes have to express itself through a very ordinary mind, 
and a mean or a wicked soul may sometimes express itself 
through a regal mind; and these possibilities are full of con- 
fusion for us, so that when we think we know a man, it is 
sometimes only his intellect we know, the dialectician or the 
rhetorician or the idiot in him, and not the strange immortal 
thing behind. We can learn to know a man's mind, but we 
can rarely be quite sure that we know his soul. That is a book 
which only God reads plainly. 

Kow 1 think that one may speak of a national soul and of 
a national mind, and distinguish one from the other, and that 
this is not mereh' figurative speaking. When I was a child I 
believed that there was actually a woman called Erin, and had 
Mr. Yeats' ''Kathleen Ni Houlihan" been then written and had 
I seen it, I should have taken it not as an allegory, but as a 
representation of a thing that might happen any day in any 
house. This I no longer believe as a physical possibility, nor 
can I convince myself that a friend of mine is right in thinking 
that there is actually a mystical entity which is the soul of 
Ireland, and which expresses itself through the mind of Ire- 
land. But I believe that there is really a spiritual tradition 
which is the soul of Ireland, the thing which makes Ireland a 
living nation, and that there is such a spiritual tradition cor- 
responding to every true nationality. This spiritual thing is 
distinct from the intellectual facts in which chiefly it makes 
its revelation, and it is distinct from them in a way analogous 
to that in which a man's soul is distinct from his mind. Like 
other spiritual things, it is independent of the material, 
whereas the mind is to a large extent dependent upon the 
material. 

I have sometimes thought (but I do not put this forward as 
a settled belief which I am prepared to defend) that spiritually 
England and the United States are one nation, while intel- 
lectually they are apart. I am sure that spiritually the Wal- 
loons of Belgium are one nation with the French, and that 



56 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

spiritually the Austrians are one nation with the Germans. 
The spiritual thing which is the essential thing in nationality 
would seem to reside chiefly in language (if by language we 
understand literature and folklore as well as sounds and 
idioms), and to be preserved chiefly by language; but it reveals 
itself in all the arts, all the institutions, all the inner life, all 
the actions and goings forth of the nation. It expresses itself 
fully and magnificently in a great free nation like ancient 
Greece or modern Germany; it expresses itself only partially 
and unworthily in an enslaved nation like Ireland. But the 
soul of the enslaved and broken nation may conceivably be a 
more splendid thing than the soul of the great free nation ; and 
that is one reason why the enslavements of old and glorious 
nations that have taken place so often in history are the most 
terrible things that have ever happened in the world. 

If nationality be regarded as the sum of the facts, spiritual 
and intellectual, which mark off one nation from another, and 
freedom as the condition which allows those facts full scope 
and development, it will be seen that both the spiritual and 
intellectual fact, nationality, and the physical condition, free- 
dom, enter into a proper definition of independence or nation- 
hood. Freedom is a condition which can be lost and won and 
lost again; nationality is a life which, if once lost, can never 
be recovered. A nation is a stubborn thing, very hard to kill; 
but a dead nation does not come back to life, any more than a 
dead man. There will never again be a Ligurian nation, nor an 
Aztec nation, nor a Cornish nation. 

Irish nationality is an ancient spiritual tradition, and the 
Irish nation could not die as long as that tradition lived in the 
heart of one faithful man or woman. But had the last reposi- 
tory of the Gaelic tradition, the last unconquered Gael, died, 
the Irish nation was no more. Any free state that might there- 
after be erected in Ireland, whatever it might call itself, would 
certainly not be the historic Irish nation. 

Davis was the first of modern Irishmen to make explicit the 
truth that a nationality is a spirituality. Tone had postulated 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 57 

the great primal truth that Ireland must be free. Davis, ac- 
cepting that and developing it, stated the truth in its spiritual 
aspect, that Ireland must be herself; not merely a free self- 
governing state, but authentically the Irish nation, bearing 
all the majestic marks of her nationhood. That the nation may 
live, the Irish life, both the inner life and the outer life, must 
be conserved. Hence the language, which is the main repository 
of the Irish life, the folklore, the literature, the music, the art, 
the social customs, must be conserved. Davis fully realised, 
with the Gaelic poets, that a nationality connotes a civilisation, 
and that a civilisation is a body of traditions. He is thus the 
lineal ancestor of the spiritual movement embodied in our day 
in the Gaelic League. Tone had set the feet of Ireland on a 
steep; Davis bade her in her journey remember her old honor 
and her old sanctity, the fame of Tara and of Clonmacnois. 
Tone is the Irish nation in action, gay and heroic and terrible; 
Davis stands by the nation's hearthside, a faithful sentinel. 

Ireland is one. Tone had insisted upon the political unity 
of Ireland. Davis thought of Ireland as a spiritual unity. He 
recognised that the thing which makes her one is her history, 
that all her men and women are the heirs of a common past, a 
past full of spiritual, emotional, and intellectual experiences, 
which knits them together indissolubly. The nation is thus not 
a mere agglomeration of individuals, but a living organic thing, 
with a body and a soul; twofold in nature, like man, yet one. 

Davis's teaching on this head is resumed thus in one of his 
most lyric paragraphs : 

''This country of ours is no sand bank, thrown up by some 
recent caprice of earth. It is an ancient land honored in the 
archives of civilisation, traceable into antiquity by its piety, 
its valor, and its sufferings. Every great European race has 
sent its stream to the river of Irish mind. Long wars, vast 
organisations, subtle codes, beacon crimes, leading virtues, and 
self-mighty men were here. If we live influenced by wind and 
sun and tree, and not by the passions and deeds of the past, we 
are a thriftless and a hopeless people." 



58 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

And in another passage he gives the Graelic League its 
watchwords : 

"Men are ever valued most for peculiar and original quali- 
ties. A man who can only talk common-place, and act ac- 
cording to routine, has little weight. To speak, look, and do 
what your own soul from its depths orders you are credentials 
of greatness which all men understand and acknowledge. Such 
a man's dictum has more influence than the reasoning of an imi- 
tative or common-place man. He fills his circle with confi- 
dence. He is self-possessed, firm, accurate, and daring. Such 
men are the pioneers of civilisation and the rulers of the human 
heart. 

"Why should not nations be judged thus? Is not a full 
indulgence of its natural tendencies essential to ,a people's 
greatness? . . . 

"The language which grows up with a people is conformed 
to their organs, descriptive of their climate, constitution, and 
manners, mingled inseparably with their history and their soil^ 
fitted beyond any other language to express their prevalent 
thoughts in the most natural and efficient way. 

"To impose another language on such a people is to send 
their history adrift among the accidents of translation — 'tis to 
tear their identity from all places — 'tis to substitute arbitrary 
signs for picturesque and suggestive names — 'tis to cut off the 
entail of feeling, and separate the people from their forefathers 
by a deep gulf — 'tis to corrupt their very organs, and abridge 
their power of expression. 

"The language of a nation's youth is the only easy and full 
speech for its manhood and for its age. And when the language 
of its cradle goes, itself craves a tomb. . . . 

"A people without a language of its own is only half a 
nation. A nation should guard its language more than its 
territories — 'tis a surer barrier, and more important frontier^ 
than fortress or river." 

The insistence on the spiritual fact of nationality is 
Davis's distinctive contribution to political thought in Ire- 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 59 

land, but it is not the whole of Davis. It has become common 
to regard him as the type of the '^intellectual Nationalist," who 
is distinguished from that other and more troublesome per- 
son, the political irreconcilable. And there is a passage of 
Gavan Duffy's which lends countenance to this. But the view 
is a false one as regards Davis and a false one as regards the 
irreconcilables. Davis accepts the political doctrine of the 
irreconcilables, and the irreconcilables accept the spiritual 
teaching of Davis. The two teachings are facets of one truth. 
And Davis saw the whole truth. He saw that Ireland must be 
independent of England. It is necessary for me to prove this. 

II. 

First to brush away a cobweb. It has been maintainecl 
that Davis would have been satisfied with what is called a 
Federal settlement. The only authority for this view seems to 
be the following passage in Gavan Duffy's "Young Ireland" : 
"Some of them (the "moderate men" who are always with us) 
came to the conclusion that an Irish Legislature for purely 
Irish purposes, as a sort of chapel of ease to the Imperial 
Parliament, ought to be demanded. Mr. Sharman Crawford, on 
behalf of himself and others unnamed, but understood to in- 
clude members of both Houses, announced that he desired the 
establishment of a Federal Union between England and Ire- 
land. He wished to see a 'local body for the purpose of local 
legislation, combined with an Imperial representation for Im- 
perial purposes ;' and he considered that no 'Act of the Imperial 
Parliament having a separate action as regards Ireland should 
be a law in Ireland unless passed or confirmed by her own 
legislative body.' It is a fact worthy to be pondered on that 
Davis was favorable to this experiment. He desired and 
would have fought for independence, but he was so little of 
what in later times has been called 'an irreconcilable,' that 
such an alternative was not the first, but the last, resource he 
contemplated. He desired to unite and elevate the whole 



60 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

nation, and he would have accepted Federation as the 
scheme most likely to accustom and reconcile Protestants to 
self-government, and as a sure step toward legislative inde- 
pendence in the end." 

Thus Duffy on Davis. In a moment we shall let Davis 
speak for himseK. 

When Davis, in 1842, leaped into his place in Irish politics 
as the chief influence on the staff of the Nation, all Ireland was 
organized in the greatest constitutional movement and under 
the greatest constitutional leader known to history.* The de- 
mand of that movement was for Repeal of the Union. Separa- 
tism was only an inarticulate faith of the common people, re- 
membered for the rest by a few noble old men like Robert 
Holmes, by a few fiery exiles like Miles Byrne. The Nation 
ranged itself under O'Connell's banner, though from the begin- 
ning its writers descried a wider horizon than O'Connell ever 
did or could. In 1843 O'Connell made what Duffy calls the 
"portentous" announcement that he felt "a preference for the 
Federative plan, as tending more to the utility of Ireland and 
the maintenance of the connection with England than the pro- 
posal of simple Repeal." Davis was away from Dublin, but 
Duffy, in a personal letter to O'Connell, which he printed as a 
leading article in the Nation, objected to the change of policy 
foreshadowed, and insisted that "the Repeal Association had 
no more right to alter the constitution on which its members 
were recruited than the Irish Parliament had to surrender its 
functions without consulting its constituents." When Davis 
returned to town he "cordially accepted," says Duffy, the policy 
of resistance. 

Davis soon spoke in the Nation. He welcomed the over- 
tures of the Federalists, but as to his own position and the 



*(A fact pregnant with obvious connotations to any fair mind, 
standing forever as proof, if proof were needed, both of English 
undemocracy and the impeachability of English motives, re Ireland. — 
Editor.) 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 61 

Nation's position he had no doubt. He settled it in one 
sentence : 

"Let the Federalists be an independent and respected 
party, the repealers an unbroken league — our stand is with the 
latter." 

So that, as between Federalism and Repeal, Davis defined 
himself a Repealer, But was he not something more? 

Davis died before Young Ireland had reached its full polit- 
ical stature or found its full political voice. Just as the United 
Irishmen spoke first the language of constitutionalism, so did 
the Young Irelauders. Davis, as their spokesman, spoke their 
official language, but he hinted and more than hinted, at a fuller 
utterance. Mitchel, who took up Davis's post in 1845, spoke the 
fuller utterance, but at his fullest he said nothing that had not 
been just as fully implied by Davis. For Davis was a Separa- 
tist. 

Davis wrote of Tone that he was "the wisest ... of our 
last generation." And he applied the adjective "wise" to Tone 
in contradistinction to Grattan, whom in the same sentence he 
called "the most sublime" of the last generation. Now Tone 
was the Separatist and Grattan was the British-Connectionist. 
When Davis wrote of Tone that he was wiser than Grattan he 
did not mean that he was more worldly-wise, that he was an 
abler business man; for Tone died a pauper and Grattan died 
wealthy; Tone died in a dungeon and his body with difficulty 
obtained Christian burial, Grattan was buried with pomp in 
Westminster Abbey. Davis meant that Tone was a wiser states- 
man than Grattan, that Separation was a wiser policy for 
Ireland than British-Connectionism. And he meant that he, 
Davis, was a disciple of Tone. 

In the light of this recognition such a passage as the fol- 
lowing, which were otherwise mere froth and foam, becomes 
full of substance : 

"This is the history of two years never surpassed in import- 
ance and honor. This is a history which our sons shall pant 



62 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

over and envy. This is a history which pledges as to persev- 
erance. This is a history which guarantees success. 

"Energy, patience, generosity, skill, tolerance, enthusiasm, 
created and decked the agitation. The world attended us with 
its thoughts and prayers. The graceful genius of Italy and the 
profound intellect of Germany paused to wish us well. The 
fiery heart of France tolerated our unarmed effort, and prof- 
fered its aid. America sent us money, thought, love — she made 
herself a part of Ireland in her passions and her organization.* 
From London to the wildest settlement which throbs in the 
tropics or shivers nigh the Pole, the empire of our misruler 
was shaken by our effort. To all earth we proclaimed our 
wrongs. To man and God we made oath that we would never 
cease to strive till an Irish nation stood supreme on this island. 
The genius which had organized us, the energy which labored, 
the wisdom that taught, the manhood which rose up, the 
patience which obeyed, the faith which swore, and the valor 
that strained for action, are here still, experienced, recruited, 
resolute. 

"The future shall realise the promise of the past." 

This is Davis's passionate appeal to his own ; and here is 
how he talks to the enemy : 

"And if England will do none of these things, will she al- 
low us, for good or ill, to govern ourselves, and see if we cannot 
redress our own griefs? 'No, never, never,' she says, 'though 
all Ireland cried for it — never! Her fields shall be manured 
with the shattered limbs of her sons, and her hearths quenched 
in their blood ; but never, while England has a ship or a soldier, 
shall Ireland be free.' 

"And this is your answer? We shall see — we shall see! 

"And now. Englishmen, listen to us ! Though you were to- 
morrow to give us the best tenures on earth — though you were 



*(The concrete story of this noble and significant episode in Ameri- 
can history is a desideratum — But who will do the research? — Editor^ 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 63 

to equalize Presbyterian, Catholic, and Episcopalian — though 
you were to give us the amplest representation in your Senate 
— though you were to restore our absentees, disencumber us of 
your debt, and redress every one of our fiscal wrongs — and 
though, in addition to all this, you plundered the treasuries of 
the world to lay gold at our feet, and exhausted the resources 
of your genius to do us worship and honor — still we tell you 
— we tell you, in the names of liberty and country — we tell 
you, in the name of enthusiastic hearts, thoughtful souls, and 
fearless spirits — we tell you, by the past, the present and the 
future, we would spurn your gifts, if the condition were that 
Ireland should remain a province. We tell you, and all whom 
it may concern, come what may — bribery or deceit, justice, 
policy, or war — we tell you, in the name of Ireland, that Ireland 
shall be a nation !" 

Now when Davis told England that, come bribery or deceit, 
justice, policy, or war, Ireland shall he a nation; when Davis 
reminded the men of Ireland that they had sworn "never to 
cease to strive until ^'an Irish nation stood supreme on this 
island/' he meant what he said. By an Irish nation '^standing 
supreme" he did really mean a Sovereign Irish State living her 
own life, mistress of her own destinies, defending her own 
shores, with her ambassadors in foreign capitals and her flag on 
the seas. He tells us that he meant this. The most important of 
Davis's political articles are those in which he develops a 
foreign policy for Ireland. And the most significant passage 
in all Davis's political writings is this (the italics are his 
own) : 

"Again, it is peculiarly needful for Ireland to have a 
Foreign Policy. Intimacy with the great powers will guard us 
from English interference. Many of the minor German States 
were too deficient in numbers, boundaries, and wealth to have 
outstood the despotic ages of Europe, but for those foreign 
alliances, which, whether resting on friendship or a desire to 
preserve the balance of power, secured them against their 
rapacious neighbors. And now time has given its sanction to 



64 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

their continuance, and the progress of localisation guarantees 
their future safety. When Ireland is a nation she will not, with 
her vast population and her military character, require such 
alliances as a security against EngKsh re-conquest ; but they 
will be useful in banishing any dreams of invasion which might 
otherwise haunt the brain of our old enemy." 

As a Separatist utterance this is as plenary as anything in 
Tone. The "Irish nation" contemplated by Davis pre-supposed 
the breaking of the English connection, for it was to have mili- 
tary resources sufficient to guard against ''an English re-con- 
quest/' and was to seek foreign alliances in order to banish any 
"dreams of invasion" cherished by "our old enemy." 

To Davis, as to Tone, England was "the enemy." Davis 
was as anti-English as Tone, and, for all his gentleness and 
charity, more bitter in the expression of his anti-Englishism 
than Tone was. To him the English language was "a mongrel 
of a thousand breeds." Modern English literature was "sur- 
passed" by French literature. 

"France is an apostle of liberty — England the turnkey of 
the world, France is the old friend, England the old foe, of 
Ireland. From one we may judge all. England has defamed 
all other countries in order to make us and her other slaves 
content in our fetters." 

Davis saw as clearly as Tone saw that the English con- 
nection is the never-failing source of Ireland's political evils; 
and he stated his perception as clearly as Tone did : 

"He who fancies some intrinsic objection to our nation- 
ality to lie in the co-existence of two languages, three or four 
great sects, and a dozen different races in Ireland, wiU learn 
that in Hungary, Switzerland, Belgium, and America, different 
languages, creeds, and races flourish kindly side by side, and he 
will seek in English intrigues the real well of the bitter woes 
of Ireland." 

Again : 

"Germany, France, and America teach us that English 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 65 

economics are not fit for a nation beginning to ewLablish a 
trade, though they may be for an old and plethoric trader ; and, 
therefore, that English and Irish trading interests are directly 
opposed." 

Yet again: 

"The land tenures of France, Norway and Prussia are the 
reverse of England's. They resemble our own old tenures ; they 
better suit our character and our wants than the loose hold- 
ings and servile wages system of modern England." 

And finally : 

"We must believe and act up to the lesson taught by reason 
and history, that England is our interested and implacable 
enemy — a tyrant to her dependants — a calumniator of her 
neighbors, and both the despot and the defamer of Ireland 
for near seven centuries." 

It has thus been established, and established by his own 
words, first, that as between Federalism and Repeal Davis was 
a Eepealer: but, secondly, that as between Repeal and Separa- 
tion Davis was a Separatist. In other words, he held the 
national position which Tone held, which Lalor and Mitchel 
held, which the Fenians held, which the Irish Volunteers hold. 
The fact that he would have accepted and worked on with 
Repeal in no wise derogates from his status as a Separatist, 
any more than the fact that many of us would have accepted 
Home Rule (or even Devolution) and worked on with it dero- 
gates from our status as Separatists. Home Rule to us would 
have been a means to an end : Repeal to Davis would have been 
a means to an end. 

In one of the phrases in which such men as he give watch- 
words to the generations, a phrase which strangely anticipates 
the most famous of ParnelFs phrases, Davis tells us what that 
end was : 

"Ireland's aspiration is for unbounded nationality." 
I have shown what he meant by "unbounded nationality ;" 
he meant sovereign nationhood, he meant spiritual, intellectual. 



66 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

and political independence. The word nationality I have used 
here and elsewhere for the inner thing which is a nation's soul, 
and the word nationhood I have made to include both that 
inner thing and the outer status, political independence. It is 
obvious that Davis uses the term "nationality" in the sense in 
which I use the term "nationhood," for if he meant only the 
inner spiritual thing his phrase would be meaningless. 

In order to the proper adjustment of values we may now 
usefully set down : 

First, that the Federalism with which O'Connell dallied 
for a moment, but which Davis and Young Ireland protested 
against and O'Connell promptly disowned, abandoning it in- 
deed with the contemptuous phrase "federalism is not worth 
that" (snapping his fingers), contemplated a domestic Irish 
legislature to deal with domestic Irish affairs, adequate Irish 
representation in an Imperial Parliament, and power of veto 
in the Irish Parliament over acts of the Imperial Parliament 
having a separate action as regards Ireland. It was thus a 
vastly bigger thing than modern Home Rule, which reserves 
everything of real importance from the jurisdiction of the 
Irish Parliament, which, far from giving the Irish Parliament a 
veto over the acts of the Imperial Parliament regarding Ire- 
land, gives the Imperial Parliament a veto over all acts of the 
Irish Parliament, and which preserves intact the power of the 
Imperial Parliament to pass all sorts of laws binding Ireland 
and to impose all sorts of taxation on Ireland, the Irish repre- 
sentation in the Imperial Parliament to be a negligible quan- 
tity.* 

Secondly, that the Repeal of the Union, which, apart from 
his momentary aberration into Federalism, was O'Connell's 
life-long demand, contemplated a Sovereign Irish Parliament 
co-ordinate with the English Parliament and with absolute 
control of Irish taxation ; and while there was to be a common 



*(A fine analysis of that English-misnomered thing, "Home Rule."- 
Editor.) 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 67 

king, army, navy, and foreign-policy, not a penny was to be 
raised from Ireland for the financing of those concerns except 
by the vote of the Irish Parliament. It will be seen that Repeal 
was as much a bigger thing than the Home Rule of 1914 as 
O'Connell was a greater man than Mr. Redmond. Repeal con- 
templated a sovereign co-ordinate Parliament; Home Rule 
specifically contemplated a subordinate Parliament. Under 
Repeal the Imperial Parliament would have had no jurisdiction 
over any man of Ireland, over any sod of Ireland's soil, over 
any shilling of Ireland's money ; under Home Rule the jurisdic- 
tion of the Imperial Parliament over these things and all other 
things in Ireland was to have been absolute, for the Act laid 
down (Clause One) that ''the supreme power and authority of 
the Parliament of the United Kingdom shall remain unaffected 
and undiminished over all persons, matters and things in 
Ireland, and every part thereof." 

Thirdly, that even the noble and semi-independent status 
which would have been secured to Ireland by Repeal was not 
sufficient for Tone, who rose against the very constitution 
which Repeal sought to restore; for Davis, who aspired to 
"unbounded nationality"; for Lalor, whose object was "not to 
repeal the Union but the conquest," and who "for Repeal had 
never gone into agitation and would never go into insurrec- 
tion"; for Mitchel, who, far from accepting that partnership 
in the British Empire on which Repeal was founded, avowed 
it as his aim in life utterly to destroy the British Empire. 
What was it that these men wanted ? They wanted Separation ; 
they wanted "to BREAK the connection with England, the 
never-failing source of all our political evils." Davis's prin- 
ciples, then, were Tone's; and as to methods. That Davis 
would have achieved Irish nationhood by peaceful means if he 
could, is undoubted. Let it not be a reproach against Davis. 
Obviously, if a nation can obtain its freedom without blood- 
shed, it is its duty so to obtain it. Those of us who believe that, 
in the circumstances of Ireland, it is not possible to obtain our 
freedom without bloodshed will admit thus much. If England, 



68 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

after due pressure, were to say to us, "Here, take Ireland," no 
one would be so foolish as to answer, "No, we'd rather fight you 
for it." But things like that do not happen.* One must fight, 
or at least be ready to fight. And Davis knew this : 

"The tribune's tongue and poet's pen 
May sow the seed in slavish men; 
But 'tis the soldier's sword alone 
Can reap the harvest when 'tis grown." 

And Davis was ready to fight. No one knew better than 
he that England would yield only to force or the threat of 
force; and that England, having once yielded, could be held 
to her bargain only by force. The nation that he visioned was 
to be an armed nation; and armed for the precise purpose of 
preventing any "reconquest" by England. No one saw more 
clearly than Davis that Ireland made her mistake of mistakes 
when her Volunteers abdicated their arms. Referring to Mad- 
den's defence of Grattan against Flood on the question of 
Simple Repeal, Davis writes : 

"This is unanswerable, but Grattan should have gone fur- 
ther. The revolution was eft'ected mainly by the Volunteers, 
whom he had inspired; arms could alone have preserved the 
constitution. Flood was wrong in setting value on one form — 
Grattan in relying on any; but before and after '82 Flood 
seems to have had glimpses that the question was one of mighty 
as well as of right, and the national laws could not last under 
such an alien army. 



♦(The predominant ideas in this context are strikingly corroborated 
by the fact noted on P. 54 ; and by the failure of any government to 
recognize officially the expressed will of the Irish Nation in the elections 
of December, 1918, when a whole people Self-Determined themselves 
bloodlessly, — a process, up to then as unique in the world's history as 
it manifestly was congruous with the War-Aims, and with the world's 
advance, if the exponents of that advance had been sincere. (Cf. Introd. 
to "Ireland and Presidents of the United States," by the Editor.) — 
Editor.) 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 69 

"Taken as military representatives, the Convention at the 
Rotunda was even more valuable than as a civic display. Mr. 
Madden censures Grattan for having been an elaborate neutral 
during these Reform dissensions; but that the result of siicli 
neutrality ruined the Convention proves the comparative want 
of power in Flood, who could have governed that Convention 
in spite of the rascally English and the feeble Irish Whigs. Oh, 
had Tone been in that council I" 

The astonishing thing about Davis is that, writing in the 
still constitutional Natioji of 1842-5, he was able to express his 
Separatist faith so clearly, and to avow so openly his readiness 
to fight for that faith. It took Duffy three years longer to 
reach the point which had been reached in 1845 by his dead 
friend. 

III. 

If we accept the definition of Irish freedom as "the Rights 
of Man in Ireland" we shall find it difficult to imagine an 
apostle of Irish freedom who is not a democrat. One loves the 
freedom of men because one loves men. There is therefore a 
deep humanism in every true Nationalist. There was a deep 
humanism in Tone; and there was a deep humanism in Davis. 
The sorrow of the people affected Davis like a personal sorrow. 
He had more respect for an aristocracy than Tone had (Tone 
had none), and would have been less ruthless in a revolution 
than Tone would have been. But he was a democrat in this 
truest sense, that he loved the people, and his love of the people 
was an essential part of the man and of his Nationalism. Even 
his rhetoric (for Davis, unlike Tone, was a little rhetorical) 
cannot disguise the sincerity of such passages as this : 

"Think of the long, long patience of the people — their toils 
supporting you — their virtues shaming you — their huts, their 
hunger, their disease. 

"To whomsoever God hath given a heart less cold than 
stone, these truths must cry day and night. Oh ! how they cross 



70 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

US like Banshees when we would range free on the mountain — 
how, as we walk in the evening light amid flowers, they startle 
us from rest of mind ! Ye nobles ! whose houses are as gorgeous 
as the mote's (which dwelleth in the sunbeam) — ye strong and 
haughty squires — ^ye dames exuberant with tingling blood — ye 
maidens whom no splendor has yet spoiled, will ye not think 
of the poor? ..." 

The real Davis must have been a greater man even than 
the Davis of the essays, or the Davis of the songs. In literary 
expression Davis was immature ; in mind he was ripe beyond all 
his contemporaries. I cannot call him a very great prose 
writer ; I am not sure that I can call him a poet at all. But I 
can call him a very great man, one of our greatest men. None 
of his contemporaries had any doubt about his greatness. He 
was the greatest influence among them, and the noblest influ- 
ence; and he has been the greatest and noblest influence in 
Irish history since Tone. He was not Young Ireland's most 
powerful prose writer : Mitchel was that. He was not Young 
Ireland's truest poet: Mangan was that, or, if not Mangan, 
Ferguson. He was not Young Ireland's ablest man of affairs : 
Duffy was that. He was not Young Ireland's most brilliant 
orator : Meagher was that. Nevertheless, "Davis was our true 
leader," said Duffy ; and when Davis died — the phrase is again 
Duffy's — "it seemed as if the sun had gone out of the heavens." 
"The loss of this rare and noble Irishman," said Mitchel, "has 
never been repaired, neither to his country nor to his friends." 
What was it that made Davis so great in the eyes of two such 
men, and two such different men, as Duffy and Mitchel? It 
must have been the man's immortal soul. The highest form of 
genius is the genius for sanctity, the genius for noble life and 
thought* That genius was Davis's. Character is the great- 



*(Note the ever-recurrent 'Nota Gaelica propria — the high reaches 
of spirituality, the loftiness of principle, the merit of the whole human 
orbit of activity always measured and gaged by its success in paralleling 
the divine. — Editor.) 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 71 

est thing in a man; and Davis's character was such as the 
Apollo Belvidere is said to be in the physical order, — in his 
presence all men stood more erect. The Romans had a noble 
word which summed up all moral beauty and all private and 
civic valor: the word '^virtus/' If English had as noble a 
word as that it would be the word to apply to the thing which 
made Thomas Davis so great a man. 



THE SOVEREIGN PEOPLE* 

P. H. Pearsb^ 

St. Enda's College, 
Bathfarnham, 

31st March, 1916. 



NATIONAL independence involves national sovereignty. 
National sovereignty is twofold in its nature. It is 
both internal and external. It implies the sovereignty 
of the nation over all its parts, over all men and things within 
the nation; and it implies the sovereignty of the nation as 
against all other nations. Nationality is a spiritual fact ; but 
nationhood includes physical freedom, and physical power in 
order to the maintenance of physical freedom, as well as the 
spiritual fact of nationality. This physical freedom is neces- 
sary to the healthy life, and may even be necessary to the con- 
tinued existence of the nation. Without it the nation droops, 
withers, ultimately perhaps dies ; only a very steadfast nation, 
a nation of great spiritual and intellectual strength like Ire- 
land, can live for more than a few generations in its absence, 
and without it even so stubborn a nation as Ireland would 
doubtless ultimately perish. Physical freedom, in brief, is 
necessary to sane and vigorous life ; for physical freedom means 
precisely control of the conditions that are necessary to sane 
and vigorous life. It is obvious that these things are partly 
material, and that therefore national freedom involves control 



•(Preface — ^This pamplilet concludes the examination of the Irish 
definition of freedom which I promised in "Ghosts." For my part, I 
have no more to say.) 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 73 

of the material things which are essential to the continued phy- 
sical life and freedom of the nation. So that the nation's 
sovereignty extends not only to all the men and women of 
the nation, but to all the material possessions of the nation, 
the nation's soil and all its resources, all wealth and all 
wealth-producing processes within the nation. In other words, 
no private right to property is good as against the public right 
of the nation. But the nation is under a moral obligation so to 
exercise its public right as to secure strictly equal rights and 
liberties to every man and woman within the nation. The 
whole is entitled to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the 
whole, but this is to be pursued exactly for the end that each 
of the individuals composing the whole may enjoy happiness 
and prosperity, the maximum amount of happiness and pros- 
perity consistent with the happiness and prosperity of all the 
rest. 

One may reduce all this to a few simple propositions : 

1. The end of freedom is human happiness. 

2. The end of national freedom is individual freedom; 
therefore, individual happiness. 

3. National freedom implies national sovereignty. 

4. National sovereignty implies control of all the moral 
and material resources of the nation. 

I have insisted upon the spiritual fact of nationality; I 
have insisted upon the necessity of physical freedom in order 
to the continued preservation of that spiritual fact in a living 
people. I now insist upon the necessity of complete control of 
the material resources of the nation in order to the complete- 
ness of that physical freedom. And here I think I give what 
has been called "the material basis of freedom" its proper place 
and importance. A nation's material resources are not the 
nation, any more than a man's food is the man ; but the material 
resources are as necessary to the nation's life as the man's food 
to the man's life. 



74 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

And I claim that the nation's sovereignty over the nation's 
material resources is absolute; but that obviously such sover- 
eignty must be exercised for the good of the nation and without 
prejudice to the rights of other nations, since national sover- 
eignty, like everything else on earth, is subject to the laws of 
morality.* 

Now the good of the nation means ultimately the good of 
the individual men and women who compose the nation. Phy- 
sically considered, what does a nation consist of? It consists 
of its men and women ; of all its men and women, without any 
exceptions. Every man and every woman within the nation 
has normally equal rights, but a man or a woman may forfeit 
his or her rights by turning recreant to the nation. No class in 
the nation has rights superior to those of any other class. No 
class in the nation is entitled to privileges beyond any other 
class except with the consent of the nation. The right and 
privilege to make laws or to administer laws does not reside in 
any class within the nation ; it resides in the whole nation, that 
is, in the whole people, and can be lawfully exercised only by 
those to whom it is delegated by the whole people. The right 
to the control of the material resources of a nation does not re- 
side in any individual or in any class of individuals ; it resides 
in the whole people and can be lawfully exercised only by 
those to whom it is delegated by the whole people, and in the 
manner in which the whole people ordains. Once more, no 
individual right is good as against the right of the whole 
people; but the people, in exercising its sovereign rights, is 
morally bound to consider individual rights, to do equity be- 
tween itself and each of the individuals that compose it as well 
as to see that equity is done between individual and individual. 

To insist upon the sovereign control of the nation over all 
the property within the nation is not to disallow the right to 



♦(Remark the norm of life is conformity to God's law. But so 
patent is this Gaelic note that further comment were superfluous. — 
Editor.) 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 75 

private property. It is for tlie nation to determine to Avhat ex- 
tent private property may be held by its members, and in what 
items of the nation's material resources private property shall 
be allowed. A nation may, for instance, determine, as the free 
Irish nation determined and enforced for many centuries, that 
private ownership shall not exist in land, that the whole of a 
nation's soil is the public property of the nation. A nation may 
determine, as many modern nations have determined, that all 
the means of transport within a nation, all its railways and 
water^^ays, are the public property of the nation to be adminis- 
tered by the nation for the general benefit. A nation may go 
further and determine that all sources of wealth whatsoever 
are the property of the nation, that each individual shall give 
his service for the nation's good, and shall be adequately pi*o- 
vided for by the nation, and that all surplus wealth shall go to 
the national treasury to be expended on national purposes, 
rather than be accumulated by private persons. There is nothing 
divine or sacrosanct in any of these arrangements;* they are 
matters of purely human concern, matters for discussion and 
adjustment between the members of a nation, matters to be 
decided upon finally by the nation as a whole; and matters in 
which the nation as a whole can revise or reverse its decision 
whenever it seems good in the common interests to do so. I do 
not disallow the right to private property ; but I insist that all 
property is held subject to the national sanction. 

And I come back again to this : that the people are the 
nation; the whole people, all its men and women; and that 
laws made or acts done by anybody purporting to represent 
the people but not really authorised by the people, either ex- 
pressly or impliedly, to represent them and to act for them do 
not bind the people; are a usurpation, an impertinence, a 
nullity. For instance, a Government of capitalists, or a Gov- 



*(See an able article on St. Thomas and this subject by Professor 
Alfred O'Rahilly in "Irish Studies," 1920.— Editor.) 



76 ■ WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

emment of clerics, or a Government of lawyers, or a Govern- 
ment of tinkers, or a Government of red-headed men, or a 
Government of men bom on a Tuesday, does not represent the 
people, and cannot bind the people, unless it is expressly or 
impliedly chosen and accepted by the people to represent and 
act for them; and in that case it becomes the lawful govern- 
ment of the people, and continues such until the people with- 
draw their mandate. Now the people, if wise, will not choose 
the makers and administrators of their laws on such arbitrary 
and fantastic grounds as the possession of capital, or the pos- 
session of red heads, or the having been born on a Tuesday ; a 
Government chosen in such a manner, or preponderatingly 
repi'^senting (even if not so deliberately chosen) capitalists, 
red-headed men, or men born on a Tuesday will inevitably 
legislate and govern in the interests of capitalists, red-headed 
men, or men born on a Tuesday, as the case may be. The people, 
if wise, will choose as the makers and administrators of their 
laws men and women actually and fully representative of all the 
men and women of the nation, the men and women of no prop- 
erty equally with the men and women of property; they will 
regard such an accident as the possession of "property," 
"capital," "wealth" in any shape, the possession of what is 
called "a stake in the country," as conferring no more right 
to represent the people than would the accident of possessing 
a red head or the accident of having been born on a Tuesday. 
And in order that the people may be able to choose as a legis- 
lation and as a government men and women really and fully 
representative of themselves, they will keep the choice actually 
or virtually in the hands of the whole people ; in other words, 
while, in the exercise of their sovereign rights they may, if 
they will, delegate the actual choice to some body among them, 
i. e., adopt a "restricted franchise," they will, if wise, adopt 
the widest possible franchise — give a vote to every adult man 
and woman of sound mind. To restrict the franchise in any 
respect is to prepare the way for some future usurpation of 
the rights of the sovereign people. The people, that is, the 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 77 

whole people, must remain sovereign not only in theory, but in 
fact. 

I assert, then, the divine right of the people, ''God's grant 
to Adam and his poor children for ever," to have and to hold 
this good green earth. And I assert the sovereignty and the 
sanctity of the nations, which are the people embodied and 
organised. The nation is a natural division, as natural as the 
family, and as inevitable. That is one reason why a nation is 
holy, and why an empire is not holy. A nation is knit together 
by natural ties, ties mystic and spiritual, and ties human and 
kindly; an empire is at best held together by ties of mutual 
interest, and at worst by brute force. The nation is the family 
in large ; an empire is a commercial corporation in large. The 
nation is of God; the empire is of man — if it be not of the 
devil.* 



II. 



The democratic truths that I have just stated are implicit 
in Tone and in Davis, though there was this difference between 
the two men, that Tone had a manly contempt for "the gentry 
(as they affect to call themselves)," while Davis had a little 
sentimental regard for them. 

But Davis loved the people, as every Nationalist must love 
the people, seeing that the people are the nation ; his national- 
ism was not mere devotion to an abstract idea, it was a devotion 
to the actual men and women who make up this nation of Ire- 
land, a belief in their rights, and a resolve to establish them as 
the owners of Ireland and the masters of all her destinies. 
There is no other sort of nationalism than this, the nationalism 
which believes in and seeks to enthrone the sovereign people. 
Tone had appealed to "that numerous and respectable class, 
the men of no property," and in that gallant and characteristic 



* (This is clear ttiinking. Is it any wonder the Irish Nation refused 
to enter the Great War?— The Editor.) 



78 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

phrase he had revealed his perception of a great historic truth, 
namely, that in Ireland "the gentry (as they affect to call 
themselves)" have uniformly been corrupted by England, and 
the merchants and middle-class capitalists have, when not 
corrupted, been uniformly intimidated, whereas the common 
people have for the most part remained unbought and un- 
terrified. It is, in fact, true that the repositories of the Irish 
tradition, as well the spiritual tradition of nationality as the 
kindred tradition of stubborn physical resistance to England, 
have been the great, splendid, faithful, common people, — that 
dumb, multitudinous throng which sorrowed during the penal 
night, which bled in '98, which starved in the Famine; and 
which is here still — what is left of it — unbought and unterrified. 
Let no man be mistaken as to who will be lord in Ireland when 
Ireland is free. The people will be lord and master. The 
people who wept in Gethsemane, who trod the sorrowful way, 
who died naked on a cross, who went down into hell, will rise 
again glorious and immortal, will sit on the right hand of God, 
and will come in the end to give judgment, a judge just and 
terrible.* 

Tone sounded the gallant reveille of democracy in Ireland. 
The man who gave it its battle-cries was James Fintan Lalor. 
Lalor was a fiery spirit, as of some angelic* missionary, im- 
prisoned for a few years in a very frail tenement, drawing his 
earthly breath in pain; but strong with a great spiritual 
strength and gifted with a mind which had the trenchant 
beauty of steel. What he had to say for his people ( and for all 
mankind) was said in a very few words. This gospel of the 
Sovereign People that Fintan Lalor delivered is the shortest 
of the gospels ; but so precious is it, so pregnant with meaning 
in its every word, that to express its sense one would have to 
quote it almost as it stands; which indeed one could do in a 



♦(Ttie truth and exaltation of this noble tribute (do CWannaibh 
Gaedheal) will some day, I believe, command the admiration of the 
world. — Editor.) 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 79 

tract a very little longer than this. No one who wrote as little 
as Lalor has ever written so well. In his first letter he laments 
that he has never learned the art of literary expression; in 
"The Faith of a Felon" he says that he has all his life been 
destitute of books. Commonly, it is by reading and writing 
that a man learns to write greatly. Lalor, who had read little 
and written nothing, wrote greatly from the moment he began 
to write. The Lord God must have inspired that poor crippled 
recluse, for no mortal man could of himself have uttered the 
things he uttered. 

James Fintan Lalor, in Duffy's phrase, "announced him- 
self" in Irish politics in 1847, and he announced himself "with 
a voice of assured confidence and authority." In a letter to 
Duffy, which startled all the Young Irelanders and which set 
Mitchel's heart on fire, he declared himself one of the people, 
one who therefore knew the people ; and he told the young men 
that there was neither strength nor even a disposition among 
the people to cany O'ConnelFs Repeal, but that there was 
strength in the people to carry national independence if 
national independence were associated with something else. 

"A mightier question is in the land — one beside which 
Repeal dwarfs down to a petty parish question ; one on which 
Ireland may not alone try her own right but try the right of 
the world ;* on which she would be not merely an asserter of old 
principles, often asserted, and better asserted before her, an 
humble and feeble imitator and follower of other countries — 
but an original inventor, propounder, and propagandist, in the 
van of the earth, and heading the nations; on which her suc- 
cess or her failure alike would never be forgotten by man, but 
would make her for ever a lodestar of history ; on which Ulster 
would be not 'on her flank' but at her side, and on which, 
better and best of all, she need not plead in humble petitions 
her beggarly wrongs and how beggarly she bore them, nor plead 
any right save the right of her MIGHT. . . . 



*(As true today as when Lalor wrote it. — Editor.) 



80 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

"Kepeal may perish with all who support it sooner than I 
will consent to be fettered on this question, or to connect my- 
self with any organised body that would ban or merge, in 
favour of Repeal or any other measure, that greatest of all our 
rights on this side of heaven — God's grant to Adam and his 
poor children for ever, when he sent them from Eden in His 
wrath and bid them go work for their bread. Why should I 
name it?" 

His proposals as to means thrilled the young orators and 
debaters as the ringing voice of an angel might thrill them : 

"As regards the use of none but legal means, any means 
and all means might be made illegal by Act of Parliament, and 
such pledge, therefore, is passive obedience. As to the pledge 
of abstaining from the use of any but moral force, I am quite 
willing to take such pledge, if, and provided, the English Gov- 
ernment agree to take it also; but, 'if not, not' Let England 
pledge not to argue the question by the prison, the convict-ship, 
or the halter; and I will readily pledge not to argue it in any 
form of physical logic. But dogs tied and stones loose is no 
bargain. Let the stones be given up; or unmuzzle the wolf- 
dog. ..." 

At Duffy's invitation Lalor developed his doctrines in two 
letters to the Nation, one addressed to the landlords and one 
to the people. To the landlords he spoke this ominous warn- 
ing: 

"Refuse it (to be Irishmen), and you commit yourselves to 
the position of paupers, to the mercy of English Ministers and 
English members; you throw your very existence on English 
support, which England soon may find too costly to afford ; you 
lie at the feet of events ; you lie in the way of a people and the 
movement of events and the march of a people shall be over 
you." 

The essence of Lalor's teaching is that the right to the 
material ownership of a nation's soil coexists with the right to 
make laws for the nation and that both are inherent in the 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 81 

same authority, the Sovereign People. He held in substance 
that Separation from England would be valueless unless it put 
the people — the actual people and not merely certain rich men 
— of Ireland in effectual ownership and possession of the soil 
of Ireland; as for a return to the status quo before 1800, it was 
to him impossible and unthinkable. When Mitchel's United 
Irishman was suppressed in 1848, Martin's Irish Felon, with 
Lalor as its standard-bearer and spokesman, stepped into the 
breach; and in an article entitled, "The Rights of Ireland" in 
the first issue of that paper (June 24, 1848) Lalor delivered the 
new gospel. A long passage must be quoted in full ; but it can 
be quoted without any comment, for it is self-luminous : 

"Without agreement as to our objects we cannot agree on 
the course we should follow. It is requisite the paper should 
have but one purpose; and the public should understand what 
that purpose is. Mine is not to repeal the Union, or restore 
Eighty- two. This is not the year '82, this is the year '48. For 
repeal I never went into 'Agitation,' and will not go into in- 
surrection. On that question, I refuse to arm, or to act in any 
mode; and the country refuses. O'Connell made no mistake 
when he pronounced it not worth the price of one drop of 
blood ; and for myself, I regret it was not left in the hands of 
Conciliation Hall, whose lawful property it was, and is. Moral 
force and repeal, the means and the purpose, were just fitted to 
each other — Arcades ambo, balmy Arcadians both. When the 
means were limited, it was only proper and necessary to limit 
the purpose. When the means were enlarged, that purpose 
ought to have been enlarged also. Repeal, in its vulgar mean- 
ing, I look on as utterly impracticable by any mode of action 
whatever; and the constitution of '82 was absurd, worthless, 
and worse than worthless. The English Government will never 
concede or surrender to any species of moral force whatsoever; 
and the country-peasantry will never arm and fight for it — 
neither will I. If I am to stake life and fame, it must assuredly 
be for something better and greater, more likely to last, more 
likely to succeed, and better worth success. And a stronger 



82 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

passion, a higher purpose, a nobler and more needful enter- 
prise is fermenting in the hearts of the people. A mightier 
question moves Ireland today than that of merely repealing 
the Act of Union, Not the constitution Wolfe Tone died to 
abolish, but the constitution that Tone died to obtain — ^inde- 
pendence; full and absolute independence for this island, and 
for every man within this island. Into no movement that would 
leave an enemy's garrison in possession of all our lauds, masters 
of our liberties, our lives, and all our means of life and hap- 
piness — into no such movement will a single man of the grey- 
coats enter with an armed hand, whatever the town population 
may do. On a wider fighting field, with stronger positions and 
greater resources than are afforded by the paltry question of 
Repeal, must we close for our final struggle with England, or 
sink and surrender. 

''Ireland her own — Ireland her own, and all therein, from 
the sod to the sky. The soil of Ireland for the people of Ire- 
land, to have and hold from God alone who gave it — to have and 
to hold to them and their heirs for ever, without suit or service, 
faith or fealty, rend or render, to any power under Heaven. 
, . . When a greater and more ennobling enterprise is on foot, 
every inferior and feebler project or proceeding will soon be 
left in the hands of old women, of dastards, imposters, swind- 
lers, and imbeciles. All the strength and manhood of the 
island — all the courage, energies, and ambition — all the pas- 
sion, heroism, and chivalry — all the strong men and strong 
minds — all those that make revolutions will quickly desert it, 
and throw themselves into the greater movement, throng into 
the larger and loftier undertaking, and flock round the banner 
that flies nearest the sky. There go the young, the gallant, the 
gifted, the daring; and there, too, go the wise. For wisdom 
knows that in national action littleness is more fatal than the 
wildest rashness ; that greatness of object is essential to great- 
ness of effort, strength, and success; that a revolution ought 
never to take its stand on low or narrow ground, but seize on 
the broadest and highest ground it can lay hands on ; and that 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 83 

a petty enterprise seldom succeeds. Had America aimed or 
declared for less than independence, she would, probably, have 
failed, and been a fettered slave to-day. 

"Not to repeal the Union, then, but the conquest — not to 
disturb or dismantle the empire, but to abolish it utterly for 
ever — not to fall back on '82, but act up to '48 — not to resume 
or restore an old constitution, but found a new nation and 
raise up a free people, and strong as well as free, and secure 
as well as strong, based on a peasantry rooted like rocks in the 
soil of the land — this is my object, as I hope it is yours; and 
this, you may rest assured, is the easier, as it is the nobler and 
more pressing enterprise." 

Lalor proceeds to develop his teaching as to the ownership 
of the soil of Ireland by its people : 

"The principle I state, and mean to stand upon, is this : 
that the entire ownership of Ireland, moral and material, up 
to the sun and down to the centre, is vested of right in the 
people of Ireland ; that they, and none but they, are the land- 
owners and law-makers of this island; that all laws are null 
and void not made by them, and all titles to land invalid not 
conferred or confirmed by them ; and that this full right of 
ownership may and ought to be asserted by any and all means 
which God has put in the power of man. In other, if not plainer 
words, I hold and maintain that the entire soil of a country be- 
longs of right to the entire people of that country, and is the 
rightful property, not of any one class, but of the nation at 
large, in full effective possession, to let to whom they will, on 
whatever tenures, terms, rents, services, and conditions they 
will; one condition, however, being unavoidable and essential, 
the condition that the tenant shall bear full, true, and undivided 
fealty and allegiance to the nation, and the laws of the nation 
whose lands he holds, and own no allegiance whatsoever to 
any other prince, power, or people, or any obligation of obed- 
ience or respect to their will, orders, or laws. I hold, further, 
and firmly believe, that the enjoyment by the people of this 



84 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

right of first ownership of the soil is essential to the vigor and 
vitality of all other rights, to their validity, efficacy, and value ; 
to their secure possession and safe exercise. For let no people 
deceive themselves, or be deceived by the words, and colors, and 
phrases, and forms of a mock freedom, by constitutions, and 
charters, and articles, and franchise. These things are paper 
and parchment, waste and worthless.* Let laws and institu- 
tions say what they will, this fact will be stronger than all 
laws, and prevail against them — the fact that those who own 
your lands will make your laws, and command your liberties 
and your lives. But this is tyranny and slavery; tyranny in 
its widest scope and worst shape; slavery of body and soul, 
from the cradle to the coffin — slavery with all its horrors, and 
with none of its physical comforts and security ; even as it is in 
Ireland, where the whole community is made up of tyrants, 
slaves, and slave-drivers. . . . "f 

As to the question of dealing with land-owners, Lalor re- 
echoes Tone and Davis : 

"There are, however, many landlords, perhaps, and cer- 
tainly a few, not fairly chargeable with the crimes of their 
order; and you may think it hard they should lose their lands. 
But recollect the principle I assert would make Ireland, in 
fact, as she is of right, mistress and queen of all those lands; 
that she, poor lady, had ever a soft heart and grateful dis- 
position; and that she may, if she please, in reward of alleg- 
iance, confer new titles or confirm the old. Let us crown her 
a queen; and then — let her do with her lands as a queen may 
do. 

"In the case of any existing interest, of what nature soever, 
I feel assured that no question but one would need to be 



*(For all colonies are essentially political slaves despite tlie glory 
of words thrown about them by imperialists. — Editor.) 

t (Well-worth pondering in capitalist-ridden America today. — 
Editor.) 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 85 

answered. Does the owner of that interest assent to swear 
allegiance to the people of Ireland, and to hold in fee from 
the Irish nation? If he assent he may be assured he will 
sufifer no loss. No eventual or permanent loss I mean ; for some 
temporary loss he must assuredly sufifer. But such loss would 
be incidental and inevitable to any armed insurrection what- 
ever, no matter on what principle the right of resistance should 
be resorted to. If he refuses, then I say — away with him — out 
of this land with him — himself and all his robber rights and 
all the things himself and his rights have brought into our 
island — blood and tears, and famine, and the fever that goes 
with famine." 

In the issue of the Irish Felon for July 8, Lalor, expecting 
suppression and arrest, wrote "The Faith of a Felon" — a state- 
ment which, ill-framed and ill-connected though he knew it to 
be, he firmly believed to "carry the fortunes of Ireland," and 
sent "forth to its fate, to conquer or be conquered." It was 
conquered for the time; but, like such immortal things, it was 
destined to rise again. In it Lalor re-affirmed his principles 
and re-stated his programme. The idea of the ownership of the 
soil by the whole people which is his essential contribution to 
modern political thought, was in this statement put more 
clearly even than before : 

"What forms the right of property in land ? I have never 
read in the direction of that question. I have all my life been 
destitute of books. But from the first chapter of Blackstone's 
second book, the only page I ever read on the subject, I know 
that jurists are unanimously agreed in considering *first 
occupancy' to be the only true oi'iginal foundation on the right 
of property and possession of land. 

"Now I am prepared to prove that 'occupancy' wants every 
character and quality that could give it moral efficacy as a 
foundation of right. I am prepared to prove this, when 
'occupancy' has first been defined. If no definition can be 
given, I am relieved from the necessity of showing any claim 
founded on occupancy to be weak and worthless. 



86 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

"To any plain understanding the right of private property 
is very simple. It is the right of man to possess, enjoy, and 
transfer the substance and use of whatever he has himself 
CREATED. This title is good against the world; and it is the 
sole and only title by which a valid right of absolute private 
property can possibly vest. 

"But no man can plead any such title to a right of property 
in the substance of the soil. 

"The earth, together with all it spontaneously produces, is 
the free and common property of all mankind, of natural right, 
and by the grant of God — and all men being equal, no man, 
therefore, has a right, to appropriate exclusively to himself 
any part or portion thereof, except with and by the common 
consent and agreement of all other men. 

"The sole original right of property in land which I ac- 
knowledge to be morally valid, is this right of common consent 
and agreement. Every other I hold to be fabricated and 
fictitious, null, void, and of no effect." 

As for Lalor's programme of action, it was in brief : 

1. To refuse all rent and arrears beyond the value of the 
overplus of harvest remaining after due provision for the 
tenants' subsistence for twelve months. 

2. To resist eviction under the English law of ejection. 

3. To refuse all rent to the usurping proprietors, until 
the people, the true proprietors, had decided in national con- 
gress what rents were to be paid, and to whom. 

4. That the people should decide that rents should "be 
paid to themselves, the people, for public purposes, and for 
behoof and benefit of them, the entire general people." 

Lalor saw clearly that this programme might, and almost 
certainly would, lead to armed revolution. If so — 

"Welcome be the will of God. We must only try to keep 
our harvest, to offer a peaceful, passive resistance, to barricade 
the island, to break up the roads, to break down the bridges — 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 87 

and, should need be, and favorable occasions oflfer, surely we 
may venture to try the steel. . . . 

"It has been said to me that such a war, on the principles 
I propose, would be looked on with detestation by Europe. I 
assert the contrary. I say such a war would propagate itself 
throughout Europe. Mark the words of this prophecy : — The 
principle I propound goes to the foundations of Europe, and 
sooner or later, will cause Europe to outrise. Mankind will 
yet be masters of the earth. The right of the people to make 
the laws — this produced the first great modern earthquake, 
whose latest shocks, even now, are heaving in the heart of the 
world. The right of the people to own the land — this will pro- 
duce the next. Train your hands, and your son's hands, gen- 
tlemen of earth, for you and they will yet have to use them. 
I want to put Ireland foremost, in the van of the world, at 
the head of the nations — to set her aloft in the blaze of the sun, 
and to make her for ages the lodestar of history. Will she take 
the path I point out — the path to be free, and famed, and 
feared, and followed — the path that goes sunward? ..." 

A fortnight later, in the Irish Felon for July 22, Lalor 
wrote the article "Clearing the Decks," which was intended to 
declare the revolution. It was worthy of a braver response 
than it received : 

"If Ireland be conquered now — or what would be worse — if 
she fails to fight, it will certanly not be the fault of the people 
at large, of those who form the rank and file of the nation. The 
failure and fault will be that of those who have assumed to 
take the office of commanding and conducting the march of a 
people for liberty without, perhaps, having any commission 
from nature to do so, or natural right, or acquired requisite.* 
The general population of this island are ready to find and fur- 
nish everything which can be demanded from the mass of a 
people — the members, the physical strength, the animal daring, 



♦(This is genuine literature — it so startles one with its arresting 
truth and obvious modem applicability. — Editor.) 



88 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

the health, hardihood, and endurance. No population on earth 
of equal amount would furnish a more effective military con- 
scription. We want only competent leaders — men of courage 
and capacity — men whom nature meant and made for leaders. 
. . . These leaders are yet to be found. Can Ireland furnish 
them? It would be a sheer and absurd blasphemy against 
nature to doubt it. The first blow will bring them out. . . . 

''In the case of Ireland now there is but one fact to deal 
with, and one question to be considered. The fact is this — 
that there are at present in occupation of our country some 
40,000 armed men, in the livery and service of England; and 
the question is — how best and soonest to kill and capture these 
40,000?* 

^'Meanwhile, however, remember this — that somewhere, and 
somehow, and by somebody, a beginning must be made. Who 
strikes the first blow for Ireland? Who wins a wreath that 
will be green for ever ?" 

That was Lalor's last wordf The issue containing the 
article was seized, the Irish Felon suppressed, and Martin and 
Lalor arrested. In a few months Lalor was released from 
prison a dying man. From his sick bed he tried to rally the 
beaten forces; he actually went down into North Munster and 
endeavored to lead the people. This effort — the almost for- 
gotten rising of 1849 — ^failed. Lalor died in Dublin a few 
weeks after. But his word has marched on, conquering. 

III. 

The doctrine and proposals of Fintan Lalor stirred John 
Mitchel profoundly. Mitchel was not a democrat by instinct. 



* (There is no segment in the area of human annals where the dic- 
tum Listory repeats itself is so frequently proven as Ireland's. The Irish 
Volunteers are dealing mth rare valor and vigor both with this very 
fact and question today, and with high success — more power to them ! — 
Editor.) 

t (And it was Pearse's, Cf. end of essay. — Editor.) 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 89 

as Tone and Lalor were; he was not a revolutionary by pro- 
cess of thought, as Tone and Lalor were ; he was not from the 
beginning of his public life a believer in the possibility and 
desirability of physical force, as Tone and Lalor were. He be- 
came all these things ; and he became all these things suddenly. 
It was as if revolutionarj^ Ireland, speaking through Lalor, had 
said to Mitchel, ''Follow me," and Mitchel, leaving all things, 
followed. Duffy and others were amazed that the most con- 
servative of the Young Irelanders should become the most 
revolutionary. They ought not to have been amazed. That 
deep and passionate man could not have been anything by 
halves. As well expect a Paul or a Teresa or an Ignatius 
Loyola to be a "moderate" Christian as John Mitchel, once that 
"Follow me" had been spoken, to be a "moderate" Nationalist. 
Mitchel was of the stuff of which the great prophets and 
ecstatics have been made. He did really hold converse with 
God ; he did really deliver God's word to man, deliver it fiery- 
tongued. 

MitcheFs is the last of the four gospels of the new testa- 
ment of Irish nationality, the last and the fieriest and the most 
sublime. It flames with apocalyptic wrath, such wrath as 
there is nowhere else in literature. And it is because the man 
loved so well that his wrath was so terrible. It is foolish to 
say of Mitchel, as it has been said, that his is a gospel of hate, 
that hate is barren, that a nation cannot feed itself on hate 
without peril to its soul, or at least to the sanity and sweetness 
of its mind, that Davis, who preached love, is a truer leader 
and guide for Ireland than Mitchel, who preached hate. The 
answer to this is — first, that love and hate are not mutually 
antagonistic but mutually complementary; that love connotes 
hate, hate of the thing that denies or destroys or threatens the 
thing beloved : that love of good connotes hate of evil, love of 
truth hate of falsehood, love of freedom hate of oppression; 
that hate may be as pure and good a thing as love, just as love 
may be as impure and evil a thing as hate ; that hate is no more 
ineffective and barren than love, both being as necessary to 



90 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

moral sanit}^ and growth as sun and storm are to physical life 
and growth. And, secondly, that Mitchel, the least apologetic 
of men, was at pains to explain that his hate was not of Eng- 
lish men and women, but of the English thing which called it- 
self a government in Ireland, of the English Empire, of English 
commercialism supported by English militarism, a thing 
wholly evil, perhaps the most evil thing that there has ever 
been in the world. To talk of such hate as unholy, unchristian, 
barren, is to talk folly or hypocrisy. Such hate is not only a 
good thing, but is a duty. 

TVTien Mitchel's critics (or his own Doppelganger, who was 
his severest critic) objected that his glorious wrath was merely 
destructive, a thing splendid in slaying, but without any 
fecunditV' or life-giving principle within it, Mitchel's answer 
was adequate and conclusive: 

"... Can you dare to pronounce that the winds, and the 
lightnings, which tear down, degrade, destroy, execute a more 
ignoble office than the volcanoes and subterranean deeps that 
upheave, renew, recreate? Are the nether fires holier than the 
upper fires? The waters that are above the firmament, do they 
hold of Ahriman, and the waters that are below the firmament, 
of Ormuzd? Do you take up a reproach against the lightnings 
for that they only shatter and shiver, but never construct ? Or 
have you a quarrel with the winds because they fight against 
the churches, and build them not ? In all nature, spiritual and 
physical, do 3'ou not see that some powers and agents have it 
for their function to abolish and demolish and derange — other 
some to construct and set in order? But is not the destruction, 
then, as natural, as needful, as the construction? — Rather tell 
me, I pray you, which is construction — which destruction? 
This destruction is creation : Death is Birth and 

" 'The quick spring like weeds out of the dead.' 
Go to — the revolutionary Leveller is your only architect. There- 
fore, take courage, all you that Jacobins be, and stand upon 
your rights, and do your appointed work w^ith all your strength^ 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 91 

let the canting fed classes rave and shriek as they will — where 
you see a respectable, fair-spoken Lie sitting in high places, 
feeding itself fat on human sacrifices — down with it, strip it 
naked, and pitch it to the demons ; whenever you see a greedy 
tyranny (constitutional or other) grinding the faces of the 
poor, join battle with it on the spot — conspire, confederate, and 
combine against it, resting never till the huge mischief come 
down, though the whole 'structure of society' come down along 
with it. ]Never you mind funds and stocks; if the price of the 
things called Consols depend on lies and fraud, down with them, 
too. Take no heed of 'social disorganisation ;' you cannot bring 
back chaos — never fear ; no disorganisation in the world can be 
so complete but there will be a germ of new order in it; 
sansculottism, when she hath conceived, will bring forth vener- 
able institutions. Never spare; work joyfully, according to 
your nature and function; and when your work is effectually 
done, and it is time for the counter operations to begin, why, 
then, you can fall a-constructing, if you have a gift that way ; if 
not, let others do then- work, and take your rest, having dis- 
charged your duty. Courage, Jacobins ! for ye, too, are minis- 
ters of heaven. . . . 

"I do believe myself incapable of desiring private ven- 
geance; at least, I have never yet suffered any private wrong 
atrocious enough to stir up that sleeping passion. The ven- 
geance I seek is the righting of my country's wrong, which in- 
cludes my own. Ireland, indeed, needs vengeance; but this is 
pmblic vengeance — public justice. Herein England is truly a 
great public criminal. England! all England, operating 
through her Government: through all her organised and effec- 
tual public opinion, press, platform, pulpit, Parliament, has 
done, is doing, and means to do, grevious wrong to Ireland. 
She must be punished; that punishment will, as I believe, 
come upon her bj-^ and through Ireland ; and so w411 Ireland be' 
avenged." 

This denunciation of woe against the enemy of Irish free- 
dom is as necessary a part of the religion of Irish nationality as 



92 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

are Davis's pleas for love and concord between brother Irish- 
men. The Church that preaches peace and goodwill launches 
her anathemas against the enemies of peace and goodwill. 
MitcheFs gospel is part of the testament, even as Davis's is ; it 
but reveals a different fatet of the truth. A man must accept 
the whole testament; but a man may prefer Davis to Mitchel, 
just as a man may prefer the gospel according to St. Luke, the 
kindliest and most human of the gospels, to the gospel of St. 
John 

Mitchel's teaching contains nothing that is definitely new 
and his. He accepted Tone ; he accepted Davis ; he accepted in 
particular Lalor; and he summed up and expressed all their 
teaching in a language transfigured by wrath and vision.* Tone 
is the intellectual ancestor of the whole modern movement of 
Irish nationalism, of Davis, and Lalor, and Mitchel, and all 
their followers ; Davis is the immediate ancestor of the spirit- 
ual and imaginative part of that movement, embodied in our 
day in the Gaelic League; Lalor is the immediate ancestor of 
the specifically democratic part of that movement, embodied 
to-day in the more virile labor organizations; Mitchel is the 
immediate ancestor of Fenianism, the noblest and most terrible 
manifestation of this unconquered nation. 

And just as all the four have preached, in different terms, 
the same gospel, making plain in turn different facets of the 
same truth, so the movements I have indicated are but facets 
of a whole, different expressions, and each one a necessary 
expression, of the august, though denied, truth of Irish Natii^n- 
hood; nationhood in virtue of an old spiritual tradition of 
nationality, nationhood involving Separation and Sovereignty, 
nationhood resting on and guaranteeing the freedom of all the 
men and women of the nation and placing them in effective 
possession of the physical conditions necessary to the reality 
and to the perpetuation of their freedom, nationhood declaring 



♦(Vision and perspective are the qualities which distinguish the 
Irish Republican leaders today. — Editor.) 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 93 

.nd establishing and defending itself by the good smiting 
word. I who have been in and of each of these movements 
aake here the necessaiy synthesis, and in the name of all of 
hem I assept the forgotten truth, and ask all who accept it to 
estify to it with me, here in our day and, if need be, with onr 
lood. 

At the end of a former essay I set that prophecy of Mitchel's 
js to the coming of the time when the kindred and tongues and 
lations of the earth should give their banners to the wind ; and 
is prayer that he, John Mitchel, might live to see it, and that 
n that great day of the Lord he might have breath and 
trength enough to stand under Ireland's immortal Green, 
ohn Mitchel did not live to see it. He died, an old man, forty 
ears before its dawning. But the day of the Lord is here, and 
ou and I have lived to see it. 

And we are young. And God has given us strength and 
ourage and counsel. May He give us victory. 



HOW DOES SHE STAND? 

P. H. Pbarsb 

THEOBALD WOLFE TONE. 

An Address Delivered at the Grave of Wolfe Tone in 

BODENSTOWN CHURCHYARD, 22nd JuNE, 1913. 

We have come to the holiest place iu Ireland; holier' to us 
even than the place where Patrick sleeps in Down. Patrick 
brought us life, but this man died for us. And though many 
before him and some since have died in testimony of the truth 
of Ireland's claim to nationhood, Wolfe Tone was the greatest 
of all that have made that testimony, the greatest of all that 
have died for Ireland whether in old time or in new. He was 
the greatest of Irish Nationalists ; I believe he was the greatest 
of Irish men. And if I am right in this I am right in saying 
that we stand in the holiest place in Ireland, for it must be that 
the holiest sod of a nation's soil is the sod where the greatest 
of her dead lies buried. 

I feel it difficult to speak to you to-day; difficult to speak 
in this place. It is as if one had to speak by the graveside of 
some dear friend, a brother in blood or a well-tried comrade in 
arms, and to say aloud the things one would rather keep to 
oneself. But I am helped by the knowledge that you who listen 
to me partake in my emotion : we are none of us strangers, being 
all in a sense own brothers to Tone, sharing in his faith, shar- 
ing in his hope still unrealised, sharing in his great love. I 
have, then, only to find expression for the thoughts and emo- 
tions common to us all, and you will understand even if the 
expression be a halting one. 

We have come here not merely to salute this noble dust 
and to pay our homage to the noble spirit of Tone. We have 
come to renew our adhesion to the faith of Tone; to express 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 95 

once more our full acceptance of the gospel of Irish Nation- 
alism which he was the first to formulate in worthy terms, 
giving clear definition and plenary meaning to all that had 
been thought and taught before him by Irish-speaking or Eng- 
lish-speaking men; uttered half articulately by a Shane 
O'Neill in some defiance flung at the Englishry, expressed 
under some passionate metaphor by a Geoffrey Keating, hinted 
at by a Swift in some biting gibe, but clearly and greatly stated 
by Wolfe Tone and not needing now ever to be stated anew for 
any new generation. He has spoken for all time, and his voice 
resounds throughout Ireland, calling to us from this grave 
when we wander astray following other voices that ring less 
true. 

This then, is the first part of Wolfe Tone's achievement — 
he made articulate the dumb voices of the centuries, he gave 
Ireland a clear and precise and worthy concept of Nationality. 
But he did more than this : not only did he define Irish Nation- 
alism, but he armed his generation in defence of it. Thinker 
and doer, dreamer of the immortal dream and doer of the im- 
mortal deed — we owe to this dead man more than we can ever 
repay him by making pilgrimages to his grave or by rearing to 
him the stateliest monument in the streets of his city. To his 
teaching we owe it that there is such a thing as Irish National- 
ism, and to the memory of the deed he nerved his generation to 
do, to the memory of '98, we owe it that there is any manhood 
left in Ireland. 

I have called him the greatest of our dead. In mind he 
was great above all the men of his time or of the after time; 
and he was greater still in spirit. It was to that nobly- 
dowered mind of his that Kickham, himself the most nobly- 
dowered of a later generation, paid reverence when he said : 

"Oh, knowledge is a wondrous power; 
'Tis stronger than the wind.* 



*("An(l kings and despots shall go down 
Before the might of mind." — Editor.) 



96 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

****** 

And would to the kind heavens 
That Wolfe Tone were here to-day." 

But greater than that full-orbed intelligence, that wide, 
gracious, richly stored mind, was the mighty spirit of Tone. 
This man's soul was a burning flame, a flame so ardent, so 
generous, so pure, that to come into communion with it is to 
come unto a new baptism, unto a new re-generation and cleans- 
ing. If we who stand by this graveside could make ourselves at 
one with the heroic spirit that once inbreathed this clay, could 
in some way come into loving contact with it, possessing our- 
selves of something of its ardor, its valor, its purity, its ten- 
derness, its gaiety, how good a thing it would be for us, how 
good a thing for Ireland; with what joyousness and strength 
should we set our faces towards the path that lies before us, 
bringing with us fresh life from this place of death, a new resur- 
rection of patriotic grace in our souls ! 

Try to get near the spirit of Tone, the gallant soldier 
spirit, the spirit that dared and soared, the spirit that loved 
and served, the spirit that laughed and sang with the gladness 
of a boy. I do not ask you to venerate him as a saint ; I ask you 
to love him as a man. For myself, I would rather have known 
this man than any man of whom I have ever heard or ever 
read. I have not read or heard of any who had more of heroic 
stuff in him than he, any that went so gaily and so gallantly 
about a great deed, any who loved so well, any who was so 
beloved. To have been this man's friend, what a privilege that 
would have been! To have known him as Thomas Russell 
knew him ! I have always loved the very name of Thomas Rus- 
sell because Tone so loved him. 

I do not think there has ever been a more true and loyal 
man than Tone. He had for his friends an immense tenderness 
and charity; and now and then there breaks into what he is 
writing or saying a gust of passionate love for his wife, for his 
children, "O my babies, my babies !" he exclaims. . . . Yes, this 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 97 

lan could love well ; and it was from such love as this he exiled 
imself ; with such love as this crushed in his faithful heart that 
e became a weary but indomitable ambassador to courts and 
amps; with the memory of such love as this, with the little 
ands of his children plucking at his heart-strings, that he lay 
own to die in that cell on Arbour Hill. 

Such is the high and sorrowful destiny of the heroes: to 
irn their backs to the pleasant paths and their faces to the 
ard paths, to blind their eyes to the fair things of life, to 
tifle all sweet music in the heart, the low voices of women and 
le laughter of little children, and to follow only the far, faint 
all that leads them into the battle or to the harder death at the 
3ot of a gibbet. 

Think of Tone. Think of his boyhood and young manhood 
1 Dublin and in Kildare, his adventurous spirit and plans, his 
arly love and marriage, his glorious failure at the bar, his 
ealthy contempt for what he called *'a foolish wig and gown," 
nd then — the call of Ireland. Think of how he put virility into 
lie Catholic movement, how this heretic toiled to make free 
len of Catholic helots, how, as he worked among them, he 
rew to know and to love the real, the historic Irish people, and 
tie great, clear, sane conception came to him that in Ireland 
tiere must be, not two nations or three nations, but one na- 
ion, that Protestant and Dissenter must be brought into 
mity with Catholic, and that Catholic, Protestant, and Dis- 
enter must unite to achieve freedom for all. 

Then came the United Irishmen, and those journeys 
trough Ireland — to Ulster and to Connacht — which, as 
escribed by him, read like epics infused with a kindly human 
umor. Soon the Government realises that this is the most 
angerous man in Ireland — this man who preaches peace among 
rother Irishmen. It does not suit the Government that peace 
nd good will between Catholic and Protestant should be 
reached in Ireland, So Tone goes into exile, having first 
ledged himself to the cause of Irish freedom on the Cave Hill 
bove Belfast. From America to France : one of the great im- 



98 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

placable exiles of Irish history, a second and a greater Fitz- 
maurice, one might say to him as the poet said to Sarsfield : 

"Ag deanamh do ghearain leis na righthibh 

Is gur fh^g tu Eire's Gaedhil bhocht' claoidhte, Och, ochon!" 

But it was no ''complaint" that Tone made to foreign 
rulers and foreign senates, but wise and bold counsel that he 
gave them; wise because bold. A French fleet ploughs the 
waves and enters Bantry Bay — ^Tone on board. We know the 
sequel : how the fleet tossed about for days on the broad bosom 
of the Bay, how the craven in command refused to make a 
landing because his commander-in-chief had not come up, how 
Tone's heart was torn with impatience and yearning — he saw 
his beloved Ireland, could see the houses and the people on 
shore — how the fleet set sail, that deed undone that would 
have freed Ireland.* 

It is the supreme tribute to the greatness of this man that 
after that cruel disappointment he set to work again, indom- 
itable. Two more expeditions, a French and a Dutch, were 
fitted out for Ireland, but never reached Ireland. Then at last 
Tone came himself ; he had said he would come, if need be, with 
only a corporal's guard : he came with very little more. 

Three small ships enter Lough Swilly. The English follow 
them. Tone's vessel fights: Tone commands one of the guns. 
For six hours she stood alone against the whole English fleet. 
What a glorious six hours for Tone! A battered hulk, the 
vessel struck ; Tone, betrayed by a friend, was dragged to Dub- 
lin and condemned to a traitor's death. Then the last scene 
in the Provost Prison, and Tone lies dead, the greatest of the 
men of '98. To this spot they bore him, and here he awaits the 
judgment ; and we stand at his graveside and remember that his 



* (Here and in the 2d next paragraph is graphic description worthy 
of Demosthenes — life, visualization, rapidity, verve, — we are there — we 
watch the fight; our hearts are thrilled with noble emotion, our wills 
leap to resolute action. — Editor.) 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 99 

work is still unaccomplished after more than a hundred years. 

When men come to a graveside they pray; and each of us 
prays here in his heart. But we do not pray for Tone — men who 
die that their people may be free "have no need of prayer." We 
pray for Ireland that she may be free, and for ourselves that 
we may free her. My brothers, were it not an unspeakable 
privilege if to our generation it should be granted to accomplish 
that which Tone's generation, so much worthier than ours, 
failed to accomplish ! To complete the work of Tone !* . . . 

And let us make no mistake as to what Tone sought to do, 
what it remains for us to do. We need not re-state our pro- 
gramme ; Tone has stated it for us : 

"To break the connection with England, the never-failing 
source of all our political evils, and to assert the independence 
of my country — these were my objects. To unite the w^hole 
people of Ireland, to abolish the memory of all past dissensions, 
and to substitute the common name of Irishmen in place of the 
dominations of Protestant, Catholic, and Dissenter — these 
were my means." 

I find here implicit all the philosophy of Irish Nationalism, 
all the teaching of the Gaelic League and the later prophets. 
Ireland one and Ireland free — is not this the definition of 
Ireland a Nation? To that definition and to that programme 
we declare our adhesion anew; pledging ourselves as Tone 
pledged himself — and in this sacred place, by this graveside, 
let us not pledge ourselves unless we mean to keep our pledge — 
we pledge ourselves to follow in the steps of Tone, never to 
rest, either by day or by night, until his work be accomplished, 
deeming it the proudest of all privileges to fight for freedom, 
to fight, not in despondency, but in great joy, hoping for the 
victory in our day, but fighting on whether victory seem near 
or far, never lowering our ideal, never bartering one jot or 



*(Cf. Note and reference, P. 47. What vision, what perspective in 
Pear.se ! What an eminently practical mind was his. No time for 
velleities had he. — Editor.) 



100 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

tittle of our birthright, holding faith to the memory and the 
inspiration of Tone, and accounting ourselves base as long as 
we endure the evil thing against which he testified with his 
blood. 

ROBERT EMMET AND THE IRELAND OF TO-DAY. 

I, 

An Address Delivered at the Emmet Commemoration in thb 

Academy op Music^ Brooklyn, New York, 

2nd March, 1914, 

You ask me to speak of the Ireland of to-day.. What can I 
tell you of it that is worthy of commemoration where we com- 
memorate heroic faith and the splendor of death? In that 
Ireland whose spokesmen have, in return for the promise of a 
poor simulacrum of liberty, pledged to our ancient enemy our 
loyalty and the loyalty of our children, is there, even though 
that pledge has been spoken, any group of true men, any right 
striving, any hope still cherished in virtue of which, lifting up 
our hearts, we can cry across the years to him whom we re- 
member to-night, "Brother, we have kept the faith; comrade, 
we, too, stand ready to serve" ? 

For patriotism is at once a faith and a service. A faith 
which in some of us has been in our flesh and bone since we 
were moulded in our mothers' wombs, and which in others of 
us has at some definite moment of our later lives been kindled 
flaming as if by the miraculous word of God ; a faith which is 
of the same nature as religious faith and is one of the eternal 
witnesses in the heart of man to the truth that we are of divine 
kindred ; a faith which, like religious faith, when true and vital, 
is wonder-working, but, like religious faith, is dead without 
good works even as the body without the spirit. So that 
patriotism needs service as the condition of its authenticity, 
and it is not sufficient to say "I believe" unless on^ can say also 
"I serve." 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 101 

And our patriotism is measured, not by the formula in 
which we declare it, but by the service which we render. We 
"owe to our country all fealty and she asks always for our ser- 
vice ; and there are times when she asks of us not ordinary but 
some supreme service. There are in every generation those 
who shrink from the ultimate sacrifice, but there are in every 
generation those who make it with joy and laughter, and these 
are the salt of the generations, the heroes who stand midway 
between God and men. Patriotism is in large part a memory 
of heroic dead men and a striving to accomplish some task left 
unfinished by them. Had they not gone before, made their at- 
tempts and suffered the sorrow of their failures, we should 
long ago have lost the tradition of faith and service, having no 
memory in the heart nor any unaccomplished dream. 

The generation that is now growing old in Ireland had al- 
most forgotten our heroes. We had learned the great art of 
parleying with our enemy and of achieving nationhood by 
negotiation. The heroes had trodden hard and bloody ways: 
we should tread soft and flowering ways. The heroes had 
given up all things : we had learned a way of gaining all 
things, land and good living and the friendship of our foe. But 
the soil of Ireland, yea, the very stones of our cities have cried 
but against an infidelity that would barter an old tradition of 
nationhood even for a thing so precious as peace. This the 
heroes have done for us ; for their spirits indwell in the place 
where they lived, and the hills of Ireland must be rent and her 
cities levelled with the ground and all her children driven out 
upon the seas of the world before those voices are silenced that 
bid us be faithful still and to make no peace with England un- 
til Ireland is ours. 

J live in a place that is verv full of heroic memories.* In 



*(I had the privilege of visiting St. Enda's with that noble and 
patriotic woman, Mrs. Lawrence Ginnell. It is hallowed now by mem- 
ories even greater than Emmet's, — as Pearse's achievements are greater 
than Emmet's. — Editor.) 



102 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

the room in which I work at St. Enda's College Robert Emmet 
is said often to have sat; in our garden is a vine which they 
call Emmet's Vine and from which he is said to have plucked 
grapes ; through our wood runs a path which is called Emmet's 
Walk — they say that he and Sarah Curran walked there; at an 
angle of our boundary wall there is a little fortified lodge called 
Emmet's Fort, Across the road from us is a thatched cottage 
whose tenant in 1803 was in Green Street Courthouse all the 
long day that Emmet stood on trial, with a horse saddled with- 
out that he might bring news of the end to Sarah Curran. Half 
a mile from us across the fields is Butterfield House, where 
Emmet lived during the days preceding the rising. It is easy 
to imagine his figure coming out along the Harold's Cross 
Road to Rathfarnham, tapping the ground with his cane, as 
they say was his habit ; a young, slight figure, A;^ith how noble 
a head bent a little upon the breast, with how high a heroism 
sleeping underneath that quietness and gravity! One thinks 
of his anxious nights in Butterfield House ; of his busy days in 
Marshalsea Lane or Patrick Street; of his careful plans — the 
best plans that have yet been made for the capture of Dublin ; 
his inventions and devices, the jointed pikes, the rockets and 
explosives upon which he counted so much; his ceaseless con- 
ferences, his troubles with his associates, his disappointments, 
his disillusionments, borne with such sweetness and serenity 
of temper, such a trust in human nature, such a trust in Ire- 
land ! Then the hurried rising,* the sally into the streets, the 
failure at the Castle gates, the catastrophe in Thomas Street, 
the retreat along the familiar Harold's Cross Road to Rath- 
farnham. At Butterfield House Anne Devlin, the faithful, 
keeps watch. You remember her greeting to Emmet in the 
first pain of her disappointment : "Musha, bad welcome to you ! 
Is Ireland lost by you, cowards that you are, to lead the people 



♦(The Irish speak of their "Risings," not rebellions; the Irish for 
the idea literally signifies "rising out." This evidences Gaelic accuracy. 
Strictly speaking, one can rebel only againt what is right j — Editor.) 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 103 

to destruction and then to leave them?" And poor Emmet's 
reply — no word of blame for the traitors that had sold him, 
for the cravens that had abandoned him, for the fools that had 
bungled ; just a halting, heartbroken exculpation, the only one 
he was to make for himself — *'Dont' blame me, Anne; the 
fault is not mine." And her woman's heart went out to him 
and she took him in and cherished him; but the soldiery were 
on his track, and that was his last night in Butterfield House. 
The bracken was his bed thenceforth, or a precarious pillow in 
his old quarters at Harold's Cross until he lay down in Kilmain- 
ham to await the summons of the executioner. 

No failure, judged as the world judges these things, was 
ever more complete, more pathetic than Emmet's. And yet he 
has left us a prouder memory than the memory of Brian vic- 
torious at Clontarf or of Owen Roe victorious at Benburb. It 
is the memory of a sacrifice Christ-like in its perfection. 
Dowered with all things splendid and sweet, he left all things 
and elected to die. Face to face with England in the dock at 
Green Street he uttered the most memorable words ever 
uttered by an Irish man : words which, ringing clear above a 
century's tumults, forbid us ever to waver or grow weary until 
our country takes her place among the nations of the earth. 
And his death was august. In the great space of Thomas Street 
an immense silent crowd ; in front of St. Catherine's Church a 
gallows upon a platform; a young man climbs to it, quiet, 
serene, almost smiling, they say — ah, he was very brave; there 
is no cheer from the crowd, no groan; this man is to die for 
them, but no man dares to say aloud "God bless you, Robert 
Emmet." Dublin must one day wash out in blood the shameful 
memory of that quiescence. Would Michael Dwyer come from 
the Wicklow Hills? Up to the last moment Emmet seems to 
have expected him. He was saying "Not yet" when the hang- 
man kicked aside the plank and his body was launched into the 
air. They say it swung for half-an-hour, with terrible contor- 
tions, before he died. When he was dead the comely head was 
severed from the body. A friend of mine knew an old woman 



104 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

who told him how the blood flowed down upon the pavement, 
and how she sickened with horror as she saw the dogs of the 
street lap up that noble blood. Then the hangman showed the 
pale head to the people and announced : ''This is the head pf a 
traitor, Robert Emmet." A traitor? No, but a true man. O 
my brothers, this was one of the truest men that ever lived. 
This was one of the bravest spirits that Ireland has ever 
nurtured. This man was faithful even unto the ignominy of the 
gallows, dying that his people might live, even as Christ died. 

Be assured that such a death always means a redemption. 
Emmet redeemed Ireland from acquiescence in the Union. His 
attempt was not a failure, but a triumph for that deathless 
thing we call Irish Nationality. It was by Emmet that men 
remembered Ireland until Davis and Mitchel took up his work 
again, and '48 handed on the tradition to '67, and from '67 we 
receive the tradition unbroken. 

You ask me to speak of the Ireland of today. What need 
I say but that today Ireland is turning her face once more to 
the old path? Nothing seems more definitely to emerge when 
one looks at the movements that are stirring both above the 
surface and beneath the surface in men's minds at home than 
the fact that the new generation is re-affirming the Fenian 
faith, the faith of Emmet. It is because we know that this is 
so that we can suffer in patience the things that are said and 
done in the name of Irish Nationality by some of our leaders. 
What one may call the Westminster phase is passing: the 
National movement is swinging back again into its proper 
channel. A new junction has been made with the past : into the 
movement that has never wholly died since '67 have come the 
young men of the Gaelic League. Having renewed communion 
with its origins, Irish Nationalism is today a more virile thing 
than ever before in our time. Of that be sure. 

I have said again and again that when the Gaelic League 
was founded in 1893 the Irish Revolution began. The Gaelic 
League brought it a certain distance upon its way; but the 
Gaelic League could not accomplish the Revolution. For five 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 105 

or six years a new phase has been due, and lo ! it is with us now. 
To-day Ireland is once more organising, once more learning the 
noble trade of arms. In our towns and country places Volun- 
teer companies are springing up. Dublin pointed the way, Gal- 
way has followed Dublin, Cork has followed Galway, Wexford 
has followed Cork, Limerick has followed Wexford, Monaghan 
has followed Limerick, Sligo has followed Monaghan, Donegal 
has followed Sligo. There is again in Ireland the murmur of a 
marching, and talk of guns and tactics. What this movement 
may mean for our country no man can say. But it is plain to 
all that the existence on Irish soil of an Irish army is the most 
portentous fact that has appeared in Ireland for over a hun- 
dred years : a fact which marks definitely the beginning of the 
second stage of the Revolution which was commenced when the 
Gaelic League was founded. The inner significance of the 
movement lies in this, that men of every rank and class, of every 
section of Nationalist opinion, of every shade of religious belief, 
have discovered that they share a common patriotism, that their 
faith is one and that there is one service in which they can come 
together at last : the service of their country in arms. We are 
realising now how proud a thing it is to serve, and in the com- 
radeship and joy of the new service we are forgetting many 
ancient misunderstandings. In the light of a re-discovered 
citizenship things are plain to us that were before obscure : 

"Lo, a clearness of vision has followed, lo, a purification 

of sight; 
Lo, the friend is discerned from the foeman, the wrong 

recognised from the right." 

After all, there are in Ireland but two parties : those who 
stand for the English connection and those who stand against 
it. On what side, think you, stand the Irish Volunteers ? I can- 
not speak for the Volunteers ; I am not authorised to say when 
they will use their arms or where or how. I can speak only for 
myself; and it is strictly a personal perception that I am 



106 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

recording, but a perception that to me is very clear, when I say 
that before this generation has passed the Volunteers will draw 
the sword of Ireland. There is no truth but the old truth and 
no way but the old way. Home Rule may come or may not 
come, but under Home Rule or in its absence there remains for 
the Volunteers and for Ireland the substantial business of 
achieving Irish nationhood. And I do not know how nation- 
hood is achieved except by armed men; I do not know how 
nationhood is guarded except by armed men. 

I ask you, then, to salute with me the Irish Volunteers. I 
ask you to mark their advent as an augury that, no matter 
what pledges may be given by men who do not know Ireland — 
the stubborn soul of Ireland — that nation of ancient faith will 
never sell her birthright of freedom for a mess of pottage: a 
mess of dubious pottage, at that. Ireland has been guilty of 
many meannesses, of many shrinkings back when she should 
have marched forward ; but she will never be guilty of that im- 
mense infidelity. 

II. 

An Address Delivered at the Emmet Commemoration in the 
Aeolian Hall^ New York_, 9th March_, 1914. 

We who speak here to-night, are the voice of one of the 
ancient indestructible things of the world. We are the voice 
of an idea which is older than any empire and will outlast 
every empire. We and ours, the inheritors of that idea, have 
been at age-long war with one of the most powerful empires 
that have ever been built up upon the earth; and that empire 
will pass before we pass. We are older than England and we 
are stronger than England. In every generation we have 
renewed the struggle, and so it shall be unto the end. When 
England thinks she has trampled out our battle in blood, some 
brave man rises and rallies us again ; when England thinks she 
has purchased us with a bribe, some good man redeems us by a 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 107 

sacrifice. Wherever England goes on her mission of empire we 
meet her and we strike at her: yesterday it was on the South 
African Veldt, to-day it is in the Senate House at Washington, 
to-morrow it may be in the streets of Dublin. We pursue her 
like a sleuth-hound; we lie in wait for her and come upon her 
like a thief in the night ; and some day we will overwhelm her 
with the wrath of God. 

It is not that we are apostles of hate. Who like us has 
carried Christ's word of charity about the earth? But the 
Christ that said "My peace I leave you, My peace I give you" is 
the same Christ that said "I bring not peace, but a sword." 
There can be no peace between right and wrong, between truth 
and falsehood, between justice and oppression, between free- 
dom and tyranny. Between them it is eternal war until the 
wrong is righted, until the true thing is established, until jus- 
tice is accomplished, until freedom is won. 

So when England talks of peace we know our answer: 
"Peace with you? Peace while your one hand is at our throat 
and your other hand is in our pocket ? Peace with a footpad ? 
Peace with a pickpocket? Peace with the leech that is sucking 
our body dry of blood? Peace with the many armed monster 
whose tentacles envelop us while its system emits an inky fluid 
that shrouds its work of murder from the eyes of men? The 
time has not yet come to talk of peace." 

But England, we are told, offers us terms. She holds out 
to us the hand of friendship. She gives us a Parliament with an 
Executive responsible to it. Within two years the Home Rule 
Senate meets in College Green and King George comes to Dub- 
lin to declare its sessions open. In anticipation of that happy 
event our leaders have proffered England our loyalty. Mr. 
Redmond accepts Home Rule as a "final settlement between the 
two nations;" Mr. O'Brien in the fulness of his heart cries 
"God Save the King ;" Colonel Lynch offers England his sword 
in case she is attacked by a foreign power. 

And so this settlement is to be a final settlement. Would 
Wolfe Tone have accepted it as a final settlement? Would 



108 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

Kobert Emmet have accepted it as a final settlement? Either 
we are the heirs to their principles or we are not. If we are, we 
can accept no settlement as final which does not ''hreah the 
connection with England, the never-jailing source of all our 
political evils j^' if we are not, how dare we go in annual pil- 
grimage to Bodenstown, how dare we gather here or anywhere 
to commemorate the faith and sacrifice of Emmet? Did, 
then, these dead heroic men live in vain? Has Ireland learned 
a truer philosophy than the philosophy of '98, and a nobler way 
<>f salvation than the way of 1803 ? Is Wolfe Tone's definition 
superseded, and do we discharge our duty to Emmet's memory 
by according him annually our pity ? 

To do the English justice, I do not think they are satisfied 
that Ireland will accept Home Rule as a final settlement. I 
think they are a little anxious to-day. If their minds were 
tranquil on the subject of Irish loyalty they would hardly have 
proclaimed the importation of arms into Ireland the moment 
the Irish Volunteers had begun to organise themselves. They 
had given the Ulster faction which is used as a catspaw by one 
of the England parties two years to organise and arm against 
that Home Rule Bill which they profess themselves so anxious 
to pass: to the Nationalists of Ireland they did not give two 
weeks. Of course, we can arm in spite of them : to-day we are 
organising and training the men and we have ways and means 
of getting arms when the men are ready for the arms. The 
-contention I make now, and I ask you to note it well, is that 
England does not trust Ireland with guns; that under Home 
Rule or in the absence of Home Rule England declares that 
we Irish must remain an unarmed people; and England is 
Tight. 

England is right in suspecting Irish loyalty, and those 
Irishmen who promise Irish loyalty to England are wrong. I 
"believe them honest ; but they have spent so much of their lives 
parleying with the English, they have sat so often and so long 
at English feasts, that they have lost communion with the 
ancient unpurchasable faith of Ireland, the ancient stubborn 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 109' 

thing that forbids, as if with the voice of fate, any loyalty from 
Ireland to England, any union between us and them, any sur- 
render of one jot or shred of our claim to freedom even in return, 
for all the blessings of the British peace. 

I have called that old faith an indestructible thing. I 
have said that it is more powerful than empires. If you would 
understand its might you must consider how it has made all 
the generations of Ireland heroic. Having its root in all 
gentleness, in a man's love for the place where his mother bore 
him, for the breast that gave him suck, for the voices of chil- 
dren that sounded in a house now silent, for the faces that 
glowed around a fireside now cold, for the story told by lips 
that will not speak again, having its root, I say, in all gentle- 
ness, it is yet a terrible thing urging the generations to perilous 
bloody attempts, nerving men to give up life for the death-in- 
life of dungeons, teaching little boys to die with laughing lips, 
giving courage to young girls to bare their backs to the lashes 
of a soldiery.* 

It is easy to imagine how the spirit of Irish patriotism 
called to the gallant and adventurous spirit of Tone or moved 
the wrathful spirit of Mitchel. In them deep called unto deep : 
heroic efifort claimed the heroic man. But consider how the 
call was made to a spirit of different, yet not less noble mould ; 
and how it was answered. In Emmet it called to a dreamer and 
he awoke a man of action ; it called to a student and a recluse 
and he stood forth a leader of men ; it called to one who loved 
the ways of peace and he became a revolutionary. I wish I 
could help you to realise, I wish I could myself adequately 
realise, the humanity, the gentle and grave humanity, of Emmet. 
We are so dominated by the memory of that splendid death of 
his, by the memory of that young figure, serene and smiling, 
climbing to the gallows above that sea of silent men in Thomas 



♦(The present generation probably surpasses all others in heroism, 
as I can bear testimony to from personal experience, for I heard with my 
own ears and beheld with my own eyes. — Editor.) 



110 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

Street, that we forget the life of which that death was only the 
necessary completion; and the life has a nearer meaning for 
us than the death. For Emmet, finely gifted though he was, 
was just a young man with the same limitations, the same self- 
questionings, the same falterings, the same kindly human emo- 
tions surging up sometimes in such strength as almost to 
drown a heroic purpose, as many a young man we have known. 
And his* task was just such a task as many of us have under- 
taken: he had to go through the same repellant routine of 
work, to deal with the hard, uncongenial details of correspond- 
ence and conference and committee meetings ; he had the same 
sordid difficulties that we have, yea, even the vulgar difficulty 
of want of funds. And he had the same poor human material 
to work with, men who misunderstood, men who bungled, men 
who talked too much, men who failed at the last moment. . . . 

Yes, the task we take up again is just Emmet's task of 
silent unattractive work, the routine of correspondence and 
committees and organising. We must face it as bravely and as 
quietly as he faced it, working on in patience as he worked on, 
hoping as he hoped ; cherishing in our secret hearts the mighty 
hope that to us, though so unworthy, it may be given to bring 
to accomplishment the thing he left unaccomplished, but work- 
ing on even when that hope dies within us. 

I would ask you to consider now how the call I have 
spoken of was made to the spirit of a woman, and how, equally, 
it was responded to. Wherever Emmet is commemorated let 
Anne Devlin not be forgotten. Bryan Devlin had a dairy farm 
in Butterfield Lane; his fields are still green there. Five sons 
of his fought in '98. Anne was his daughter, and she went to 
keep house for Emmet when he moved into Butterfield House. 
You know how she kept vigil there on the night of the rising. 
When all was lost and Emmet came out in his hurried retreat 
through Rathfamham to the mountains, her greeting was — 
according to tradition it was spoken in Irish, and Emmet must 
have replied in Irish — ''Musha, bad welcome to you ! Is Ireland 
lost by you, cowards that you are to lead the people to destruc- 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 111 

tion and then to leave them?" ^'Don't blame me, Anne; the 
fault is not mine," said Emmet. And she was sorry for the 
pain her words had inflicted, spoken in the pain of her own dis- 
appointment. She would have tended him like a mother could 
he have tarried there, but his path lay to Kilmashogue, and hers 
was to be a harder duty. When Sirr came out with his sol- 
diery she was still keeping her vigil. "Where is Emmet?" *'I 
have nothing to tell you." To all their questions she had but 
one answer: ''I have nothing to say; I have nothing to tell 
you." They swung her up to a cart and half-hanged her sev- 
eral times; after each half-hanging she was revived and ques- 
tioned : still the same answer. They pricked her breast with 
their baj'onets until the blood spurted out in their faces. They 
dragged her to prison and tortured her for days. Not one word 
did they extract from that steadfast woman. And when Emmet 
was sold, he was sold, not by a woman, but by a man — by the 
friend that he had trusted — by the counsel who, having sold 
him, was to go through the ghastly mockery of defending him 
at the bar. 

The fathers and mothers of Ireland should often tell their 
children that story of Robert Emmet and that story of Anne 
Devlin. To the Irish mothers who hear me I would say that 
when at night you kiss your children and in your hearts call 
down a benediction, you could wish for your boys no higher 
thing than that, should the need come, they may be given the 
strength to make Emmet's sacrifice, and for your girls no 
greater gift from God than such fidelity as Anne Devlin's. 

It is more than a hundred years since these things were 
sufifered ; and they were suffered in vain if nothing of the spirit 
of Emmet and Anne Devlin survives in the young men and 
young women of Ireland. Does anything of that spirit sur- 
vive? I think I can speak for my own generation. I think I 
can speak for my contemporaries in the Gaelic League, an or- 
ganisation which has not yet concerned itself with politics, but 
whose younger spirits are accepting the full national idea and 
are bringing into the national struggle the passion and the 



112 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

practicalness which marked the early stages of the language 
movement. I think I can speak for the young men of the Volun- 
teers. So far, they have no programme beyond learning the 
trade of arms : a trade which no man of Ireland could learn for 
over a hundred years past unless he took the English shilling. 
It is a good programme ; and we may almost commit the future 
of Ireland to the keeping of the Volunteers. I think I can speak 
for a younger generation still : for some of the young men that 
are entering the National University, for my own pupils at St. 
Enda's College, for the boys of the Fianna Eireann. To the 
grey-haired men whom I see on this platform, to John Devoy 
and Richard Burke, I bring, then, this message from Ireland : 
that their seed-sowing of forty years ago has not been without 
its harvest, that there are young men and little boys in Ire- 
land to-day who remember what they taught and who, with 
God's blessing, will one day take — or make — an opportunity 
of putting their teaching into practice. 

AN ADDENDUM. 

(August^ 1914) 

Since I spoke the words here reprinted there has been a 
quick movement of events in Ireland. The young men of the 
nation stand organised and disciplined, and are rapidly arming 
themselves; blood has flowed in Dublin streets, and the cause 
of the Volunteers has been consecrated by a holocaust. A 
European war has brought about a crisis which may contain, 
as yet hidden within it, the moment for which the generations 
have been waiting. It remains to be seen whether, if that 
moment reveals itself, we shall have the sight to see and the 
courage to do, or whether it shall be written of this generation, 
alone of all the generations of Ireland, that it had none among 
it who dared to make the ultimate sacrifice. 



THE MURDER MACHINE* 

I. 
THE BROAD ARROW 

P. H. Pbarse^ 

St. Enda's College, 
Rathfarnham, 

1st Jan., 1916. 

A FRENCH writer has paid the English a very well- 
deserved compliment. He says that they never com- 
mit a useless crime. When they hire a man to assas- 
sinate an Irish patriot, when they blow a Sepoy from the 
mouth of a cannon, wlien they produce a famine in one of their 
dependencies, they have always an ulterior motive. They do 
not do it for fun. Humorous as these crimes are, it is not the 
humor of them, but their ^utility, that appeals to the English. 
Unlike Gilbert's Mikado, they would see nothing humorous in 
boiling oil. If they retained boiling oil in their penal code, 
they would retain it, as they retain flogging before execution in 
Egypt, strictly because it has been found useful. 

This observation will help one to an understanding of 
some portions of the English administration of Ireland. The 
English administration of Ireland has not been marked by any 
unnecessary cruelty. Every crime that the English have 
planned and carried out in Ireland has had a definite end. 
Every absurdity that they have set up has had a grave purpose. 
The Famine was not enacted merely from a love of horror. The 
Boards that rule Ireland were not contrived in order to add 



♦Preface — This pamphlet is not, as its name might seem to 
import, a penny dreadful, at least in the ordinary sense. It con- 
sists of a series of studies of the English education system in Ire- 
land.) 



114 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

to the gaiety of nations. The Famine and the Boards are alike 
parts of a profound polity. 

I have spent the greater part of my life in immediate con- 
templation of the most grotesque and horrible of the English 
inventions for the debasement of Ireland. I mean their educa- 
tion system. The English once proposed in their Dublin Parlia- 
ment a measure for the castration of all Irish priests who re- 
fused to quit Ireland. The proposal was so filthy that, al- 
though it duly passed the House and was transmitted to Eng- 
land with the warm recommendation of the Viceroy, it was not 
eventually adopted. But the English have actually carried 
out an even filthier thing. They have planned and established 
an education system which more wickedly does violence to the 
elementary human rights of Irish children than would an edict 
for the general castration of Irish males. The system has 
aimed at the substitution for men and women of mere Things. 
It has not been an entire success. There are still a great many 
thousand men and women in Ireland. But a great many thou- 
sand of what, by way of courtesy, we call men and women are 
simply Things. Men and women, however depraved, have 
Mndly human allegiances. But these Things have no allegiance. 
Jjike other Things, they are for sale. 

When one uses the term education system as the name of 
the system of schools, colleges, universities, and what not 
which the English have established in Ireland, one uses it as a 
convenient label, just as one uses the term government as a 
convenient label for the system of administration by police 
which obtains in Ireland instead of a government. There is no 
education system in Ireland. The English have established the 
simulacrum of an education system, but its object is the precise 
contrary of the object of an education system. Education 
should foster; this education is meant to repress. Education 
should inspire; this education is meant to tame. Education 
should harden ; this education is meant to enervate. The Eng- 
lish are too wise a people to attempt to educate the Irish, in 
any worthy sense. As well expect them to arm us. 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 115 

Professor Eoin Mac Neill has compared the English educa- 
tion system in Ireland to the systems of slave education which 
existed in the ancient pagan republics side by side with the 
systems intended for the education of freemen. To the chil- 
dren of the free were taught all noble and goodly things which 
would tend to make them strong and proud and valiant; from 
the children of the slaves all such dangerous knowledge was 
hidden. They were taught not to be strong and proud and 
valiant, hut to be sleek, to be obsequious, to be dexterous : the 
object was not to make them good men, but to make them good 
slaves. And so in Ireland. The education system here was 
designed by our masters in order to make us willing or at least 
manageable slaves. It has made of some Irishmen not slaves 
merely, but very eunuchs, with the smoothness and softness of 
eunuchs, with the indifference and cruelty of eunuchs; kinless 
beings, who serve for pay a master that they neither love nor 
hate. 

Ireland is not merely in servitude, but in a kind of penal 
servitude. Certain of the slaves among us are appointed jailors 
over the common herd of slaves. And they are trained from 
their youth for this degrading office. The ordinary slaves are 
trained for their lowly tasks in dingy places called schools; 
the buildings in which the higher slaves are trained are called 
colleges and universities. If one may regard Ireland as a 
nation in penal servitude, the schools and colleges and univer- 
sities may be looked upon as the symbol of her penal sei*vitude. 
They are, so to speak, the broad-arrow upon the back of Ire- 
land. 

II. 

THE MUKDER MACHINE 

A few years ago, when people still believed in the immin- 
ence of Home Rule, there were numerous discussions as to the 
tasks awaiting a Home Rule Parliament and the order in which 
they should be taken up. Mr. John Dillon declared that one 



116 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

of the first of those tasks was the recasting of the Irish educa- 
tion system, by which he meant the English education system 
in Ireland. The declaration alarmed the Bishop of Limerick, 
always suspicious of Mr. Dillon, and he told that statesman 
in effect that the Irish education system did not need recast- 
ing — that all was well there. 

The positions seemed irreconcilable. Yet in the Irish 
Review I quixotically attempted to find common ground be- 
tween the disputants, and to state in such a way as to command 
the assent of both the duty of a hypothetical Irish Parliament 
with regard to education. I put it that what education in 
Ireland needed was less a reconstruction of its machinery than 
a regeneration in spirit. The machinery, I said, has doubt- 
less its defects, but what is chiefly wrong with it is that it is 
mere machinery, a lifeless thing without a soul. Dr. O'Dwyer 
was probably concerned for the maintenance of portion of the 
machinery, valued by him as a Catholic Bishop, and not with- 
out reason; and I for one was (and am) willing to leave that 
particular portion untouched, or practically so. But the 
machine as a whole is no more capable of fulfilling the function 
for which it is needed than would an automaton be capable of 
fulfilling the function of a living teacher in a school. A soul- 
less thing cannot teach; but it can destroy. A machine can- 
not make men ; but it can break men. 

One of the most terrible things about the English educa- 
tion system in Ireland is its ruthlessness. I know no image 
for that ruthlessness in the natural order. The ruthlessness of 
a wild beast has in it a certain mercy — it slays. It has in it a 
certain grandeur of animal force. But this ruthlessness is 
literally without pity and without passion. It is cold and 
mechanical, like the ruthlessness of an immensely powerful 
engine. A machine vast, complicated, with a multitude of far- 
reaching arms, with many ponderous presses, carrying out 
mysterious and long-drawn processes of shaping and moulding, 
is the true image of the Irish education system. It grinds night 
and day; it obeys immutable and predetermined laws; it is as 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 117 

devoid of understanding, of sympathy, of imagination as is 
any other piece of machinery that performs an appointed task. 
Into it is fed all the raw human material in Ireland ; it seizes 
upon it inexorably and rends and compresses and remoulds; 
and what it cannot refashion after the regulation pattern it 
ejects with all likeness of its former self crushed from it, a 
bruised and shapeless thing, thereafter accounted waste. 

Our common parlance has become impressed with the con- 
ception of education as some sort of manufacturing process. 
Our children are the "raw material"; we desiderate for their 
education "modern methods" which must be "efficient" but 
"cheap"; we send them to Clongowes to be "finished"; when 
"finished" they are "turned out"; specialists "grind" them for 
the English Civil Service and the so-called liberal professions ; 
in each of our great colleges there is a department known as the 
"scrap-heap," though officially called the Fourth Preparatory 
— the limbo to which the debris ejected by the macliine is role- 
gated. The stuff there is either too hard or too soft to be 
moulded to the pattern required by the Civil Service Commis- 
sioners or the Incorporated Law Society. 

In our adoption of the standpoint here indicated there is 
involved a primary blunder as to the nature and functions of 
education. For education has not to do with the manufacture 
of things, but with fostering the growth of things. And the 
conditions we should strive to bring about in our education 
system are not the conditions favorable to the rapid and cheap 
manufacture of readymades, but the conditions favorable to 
the growth of living organisms — the liberty and the light and 
the gladness of a ploughed field under the spring sunshine. 

In particular I would urge that the Irish school system of 
the future should give freedom — freedom to the individual 
school, freedom to the individual teacher, freedom as far as 
may be to the individual pupil. Without freedom there can 
be no right growth ; and education is properly the fostering of 
the right growth of a personality. Our school system must 
bring, too, some gallant inspiration. And with the inspiration 



118 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

it must bring a certain hardening. One scarcely knows 
whether modern sentimentalism or modern utilitarianism is 
the more sure sign of modern decadence. I would boldly 
preach the antique faith that fighting is the only noble thing, 
and that he only is at peace with God who is at war with the 
powers of evil. 

In a true education system, religion, patriotism, litera- 
ture, art and science would be brought in such a way into the 
daily lives of boys and girls as to affect their character and 
conduct. We may assume that religion is a vital thing in 
Irish schools, but I know that the other things, speaking broad- 
ly, do not exist. There are no ideas there, no love of beauty, no 
love of books, no love of knowledge, no heroic inspiration. And 
there is no room for such things either on the earth or in the 
heavens, for the earth is cumbered and the heavens are darkened 
by the monstrous bulk of the programme. Most of the educa- 
tors detest the programme. They are like the adherents of a 
dead creed who continue to mumble formulas and to make 
obeisance before an idol which they have found out to be but 
a spurious divinity. 

Mr. Dillon was to be sympathised with, even though 
pathetically premature, in looking to the then anticipated ad- 
vent of Home Rule for a chance to make education what it 
should be. But I doubt if he and the others who would have 
had power in a Home Rule Parliament realised that what is 
needed here is not reform, not even a revolution, but a vastly 
bigger thing — a creation. It is not a question of pulling mach- 
inery asunder and piecing it together again; it is a question 
of breathing into a dead thing a living soul, 

III. 
"I DENY" 

I postulate that there is no education in Ireland apart from 
the voluntary efforts of a few people, mostly mad. Let us there- 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 119 

fore not talk of reform, or of reconstruction. You cannot re- 
form that which is not; you cannot by any process of recon^ 
struction give organic life to a negation. In a literal sense the 
work of the first Minister of Education in a free Ireland will be 
a work of creation ; for out of chaos he will have to evolve order 
and into a dead mass he will have to breathe the breath of life. 

The English thing that is called education in Ireland is 
founded on a denial of the Irish nation. No education can start 
with a Nego, any more than a religion can. Everything that 
even pretends to be true begins with its Credo. It is obvious 
that the savage who says *'I believe in Mumbo J umbo" is nearer 
to true religion than the philosopher who says "I deny God and 
the spiritual in man." Now to teach a child to deny is the 
greatest crime a man or a State can commit. Certain schools 
in Ireland teach children to deny their religion; nearly all the 
schools in Ireland teach children to deny their nation. "I 
deny the spirituality of my nation; I deny the lineage of my 
blood; I deny my rights and responsibilities." This Nego is 
their Credo, this evil their good. 

To invent such a system of teaching and to persuade us that 
it is an education system, an Irish education system to be de- 
fended by Irishmen against attack, is the most wonderful 
thing the English have accomplished in Ireland ; and the most 
wicked. 

IV. 

AGAINST MODERNISM 

All the speculations one saw a few years ago as to the prob- 
able effect of Home Rule on education in Ireland showed one 
how inadequately the problem was grasped. To some the ex- 
pected advent of Home Rule seemed to promise as its main 
fruition in the field of education the raising of their salaries; 
to others the supreme thing it was to bring in its train was the 
abolition of Dr. Starkie ; to some again it held out the delightful 



120 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

prospect of Orange boys and Orange girls being forced to learn 
Irish ; to others it meant the dawn of an era of commonsense, 
the ushering in of the reign of "a sound modern education," 
suitable to the needs of a progressive modern people. 

I scandalised many people at the time by saying that the 
last was the view that irritated me most. The first view was 
not so selfish as it might appear, for between the salary offered 
to teachers and the excellence of a country's education system 
there is a vital connection. And the second and third fore- 
casts at any rate opened up picturesque vistas. The passing of 
Dr. Starkie would have had something of the pageantry of the 
banishment of Napoleon to St. Helena (an effect which would 
have been heightened had he been accompanied into exile by 
Mr. Bonaparte Wyse), and the prospect of the children of 
Sandy Row being taught to curse the Pope in Irish was rich and 
soul-satisfying. These things we might or might not have seen 
had Home Rule come. But I expressed the hope that even 
Home Rule would not commit Ireland to an ideal so low as the 
ideal underlying the phrase "a sound modern education." 

It is a vile phrase, one of the vilest I know. Yet we find 
it in nearly every school prospectus, and it comes pat to the 
lips of nearly everyone that writes or talks about schools. 
Now there can be no such thing as "a sound modern education" 
— as well talk about a "lively modern faith" or a "serviceable 
modern religion." It should be obvious that the more "modem" 
an education is the less "sound," for in education "modernism" 
is as much a heresy as in religion. In both medievalism were 
a truer standard. We are too fond of clapping ourselves upon 
the back because we live in modern times, and we preen our- 
selves quite ridiculously (and unnecessarily) on our modern 
progress. There is, of course, such a thing as modern progress, 
but it has been won at how great a cost ! How many precious 
things have we flung from us to lighten ourselves for that race ! 

And in some directions we have progressed not at all, or 
we have progressed in a circle; perhaps indeed all progress on 
this planet, and on every planet, is in a circle, just as every 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 121 

line you draw on a globe is a circle or part of one. Modern 
speculation is often a mere groping where ancient men saw 
clearly. All the problems with which we strive (I mean all 
the really important problems) were long ago solved by our 
ancestors, only their solutions have been forgotten. There have 
been States in which the rich did not grind the poor, although 
there are no such States now ; there have been free self-govern- 
ing democracies, although there are few such democracies 
now; there have been rich and beautiful social organisations, 
with an art and a culture and a religion in every man's house, 
though for such a thing to-day we have to search out some 
sequestered people living by a desolate seashore or in a high 
forgotten valley among lonely hills — a hamlet of lar-Connacht 
or a village in the Austrian Alps. Mankind, I repeat, or some 
section of mankind, has solved all its main problems some- 
where and at some time. I suppose no universal and permanent 
solution is possible as long as the old Adam remains in us, the 
Adam that makes each one of us, and each tribe of us, some- 
thing of the rebel, of the freethinker, of the adventurer, of the 
egoist. But the solutions are there, and it is because we fail 
in clearness of vision or in boldness of heart or in singleness of 
purpose that we cannot find them. 



AN IDEAL IN EDUCATION. 

The words and phrases of a language are always to some 
extent revelations of the mind of the race that has moulded the 
language. How often does an Irish vocable light up as with a 
lantern some immemorial Irish attitude, some whole phase of 
Irish thought ! Thus, the words which the old Irish employed 
when they spoke of education show that they had gripped the 
very heart of that problem. To the old Irish the teacher was 
aite "fosterer," the pupil was dalta "foster-child," the system 



122 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

was aiteachas, "foster-age"; words which we still retain as 
oide, dalta, oideachas. 

And is it not the precise aim of education to "foster"? 
Not to inform, to indoctrinate, to conduct through a course of 
studies, (though these be the dictionary meanings of the word) , 
but, first and last, to "foster" the elements of character native 
to a soul, to help to bring these to their full perfection rather 
than to implant exotic excellences. 

Fosterage implies a foster-father or foster-mother — a per- 
son — as its centre and inspiration rather than a code of rules. 
Modern education systems are elaborate pieces of machinery 
devised by highly-salaried officials for the purpose of turning 
out citizens according to certain approved patterns. The 
modern school is a state-controlled institution designed to pro- 
duce workers for the State, and is in the same category with a 
dockyard or any other state-controlled institution which pro- 
duces articles necessary to the progress, well-being, and defence 
of the State. We speak of the "efficiency," the "cheapness," 
and the "up-to-dateness" of an education system just as we 
speak of the "efficiency," the "cheapness," and the "up-to-date- 
ness" of a system of manufacturing coal-gas. We shall soon 
reach a stage when we shall speak of the "efficiency," the 
"cheapness," and the "up-to-dateness" of our systems of soul- 
saving. We shall hear it said "Salvation is very cheap in Eng- 
land," or "The Germans are wonderfully efficient in prayer," or 
"Gee, it takes a New York parson to hustle ginks into Heaven." 

Now education is as much concerned with souls as religion 
is. Religion is a Way of Life, and education is a preparation 
of the soul to live its life here and hereafter; to live it nobly 
and fully. And as we cannot think of religion without a Person 
as its centre, as we cannot think of a church without its 
Teacher, so we cannot think of a school without its Master. A 
school, in fact, according to the conception of our wise ances- 
tors, was less a place than a little group of persons, a teacher 
and his pupils. Its place might be poor, nay, it might have no 
local habitation at all, it might be peripatetic : where the master 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 123 

went the disciples followed. One may think of Our Lord and 
His friends as a sort of school: was He not the Master, and 
were not they His disciples? That gracious conception was not 
only the conception of the old Gael, pagan and Christian, but 
it was the conception of Europe all through the Middle Ages. 
Philosophy was not crammed out of textbooks, but was learned 
at the knee of some great philosopher; art was learned in the 
studio of some master-artist, a craft in the workshop of some 
master-craftsman. Always it was the personality of the master 
that made the school, never the State that built it of brick and 
mortar, drew up a code of rules to govern it, and sent hirelings 
into it to carry out its decrees. 

I do not know how far it is possible to revive the old ideal 
of fosterer and foster-child. I know it were very desirable. 
One sees too clearly that the modern system, under which the 
teacher tends more and more to become a mere civil servant, is 
making for the degradation of education, and will end in irre- 
ligion and anarchy. The modern child is coming to regard his 
teacher as an official paid by the State to render him certain 
services; services which it is in his interest to avail of, since 
by doing so he will increase his earning capacity later on ; but 
services the rendering and acceptance of which no more imply 
a sacred relationship than do the rendering and acceptance of 
the services of a dentist or a chiropodist. There is thus coming 
about a complete reversal of the relative positions of master 
and disciple, a tendency which is increased by every statute 
that is placed on the statute book, by every rule that is added 
to the education code of modern countries. 

Against this trend I would oppose the ideal of those who 
shaped the Gaelic polity nearly two thousand years ago. It is 
not merely that the old Irish had a good education system ; they 
had the best and noblest that has ever been known among men. 
There has never been any human institution more adequate to 
its purpose than that which, in pagan times, produced Cuchu- 
lainn and the Boy-Corps of Eamhain Macha and, in Christian 
times, produced Enda and the companions of his solitude in 



124 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

Aran. The old Irish system, pagan and Christian, possessed in 
pre-eminent degree the thing most needful in education: an 
adequate inspiration. Colmcille suggested what that inspira- 
tion was when he said, "If I die it shall be from the excess of 
the love that I bear the Gael," A love and a service so exces- 
sive as to annihilate all thought of self, a recognition that one 
must give all, must be willing always to make the ultimate 
sacrifice — this is the inspiration alike of the story of Cuchu- 
lainn and of the story of Colmcille, the inspiration that made 
the one a hero and the other a saint. 

VI. 

MASTER AND DISCIPLES. 

In the Middle Ages there were everywhere little groups of 
persons clustering round some beloved teacher, and thus it 
was that men learned not only the humanities but aU gracious 
and useful crafts. There were no State art schools, no State 
technical schools: as I have said, men became artists in the 
studio of some master-artist, men learned crafts in the work- 
shop of some master-craftsman. It was always the individual 
inspiring, guiding, fostering other individuals ; never the State 
usurping the place of father or fosterer, dispensing education 
like a universal provider of readymades, aiming at turning out 
all men and women according to regulation patterns. 

In Ireland the older and truer conception was never lost 
sight of. It persisted into Christian times when a Kieran or an 
Enda or a Colmcille gathered his little group of foster-children 
(the old word was still used) around him : they were collectively 
his family, his household, his clann — many sweet and endear- 
ing words were used to mark the intimacy of that relationship. 
It seems to me that there has been nothing nobler in the history 
of education than this development of the old Irish plan of 
fosterage under a Christian rule, when to the pagan ideals of 
strength and truth there were added the Christian ideals of 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 125 

love and humility. And this, remember, was not the education 
system of an aristocracy, but the education system of a people. 
It was more democratic than any education system in the 
world today. Our very divisions into primary, secoudai-y, and 
university crystallise a snobbishness partly intellectual and 
partly social. At Clonard Kieran, the son of a carpenter, sat 
in the same class as ColmciUe, the son of a king.^ To Clonard 
or to Aran or to Clonmacnois went every man, rich or poor, 
prince or peasant, who wanted to sit at Finnian's or at Enda's 
or at Kieran's feet and learn of his wisdom. 

Always it was the personality of the teacher that drew 
them there. And so it was all through Irish history. A great 
poet or a great scholar had his foster-children who lived at his 
house or fared with him through the country. Even long after 
Kin sale the Munster poets had their little groups of pupils; 
and the hedge schoolmasters of the nineteenth centuiy were the 
last repositories of a high tradition. 

I dwell on the importance of the personal element in educa- 
tion. I would have every child not merely a unit in a school 
attendance, but in some intimate personal way the pupil of a 
teacher, or, to use more expressive words, the disciple of a 
master. And here I nowise contradict another position of 
mine, that the main object in education is to help the child to 
be his own true and best self. What the teacher should bring 
to his pupil is not a set of readymade opinions, or a stock of 
cut-and-dry information, but an inspiration and an example; 
and his main qualification should be, not such an overmaster- 
ing will as shall impose itself at all hazards upon all weaker 
wills that come under its influence, but rather so infectious an 
enthusiasm as shall kindle new enthusiasm. The Montessori 
system, so admirable in many ways, would seem at first sight 
to attach insufficient importance to the function of the teacher 
in the schoolroom. But this is not reaUy so. True, it would 
make the spontaneous efforts of the children the main motive 
power, as against the dominating will of the teacher which is 
the main motive power in the ordinary schoolroom. But the 



126 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

teacher must be there always to inspire, to foster. If you 
would realise how true this is, how important the personality 
of the teacher, even in a Montessori school, try to imagine a 
Montessori school conducted by the average teacher of your 
acquaintance, or try to imagine a Montessori school conducted 
by yourself! 

VII. 

OF FKEEDOM IN EDUCATION. 

I have claimed elsewhere that the native Irish education 
system possessed pre-eminently two characteristics: first, free- 
dom for the individual, and, secondly, an adequate inspiration. 
Without these two things you cannot have education, no mat- 
ter how you may elaborate educational machinery, no matter 
how you may multiply educational programmes. And be- 
cause those two things are preeminently lacking in what passes 
for education in Ireland, we have in Ireland strictly no educa- 
tion system at all; nothing that by any extension of the mean- 
ing of words can be called an education system. We have an 
elaborate machinery for teaching persons certain subjects, and 
the teaching is done more or less efficiently ; more efficiently, I 
imagine, than such teaching is done in England or in America. 
We have three universities and four boards of education. We 
have an army of inspectors, mostly overpaid. We have a host 
of teachers, mostly underpaid. We have a Compulsory Educa- 
tion Act. We have the grave and bulky code of the Commis- 
sioners of National Education, and the slim- impertinent 
pamphlet which enshrines the wisdom of the Commissioners of 
Intermediate Education. We have a vast deal more in the 
shape of educational machinery and stage properties. But we 
have, I repeat, no education system ; and only in isolated places 
have we any education. The essentials are lacking. 

And first of freedom. The word freedom is no longer un- 
derstood in Ireland. We have no experience of the thing, and 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 127 

we have almost lost our conception of the idea. So completely 
is this true that the very organisations which exist in Ireland 
to champion freedom show no disposition themselves to accord 
freedom : they challenge a great tyranny, but they erect their 
little tyrannies. "Thou shalt not" is half the law of Ireland, 
and the other half is "Thou must." 

Now nowhere has the law of ''Thou shalt not" and "Thou 
must" been so rigorous as in the schoolroom. Surely the first 
essential of healthy life there was freedom. But there has 
been and there is no freedom in Irish education; no freedom 
for the child, no freedom for the teacher, no freedom for the 
school. Where young souls, young minds, young bodies de- 
manded the largest measure of individual freedom consistent 
with the common good, freedom to move and grow on their 
natural lines, freedom to live their own lives — for what is 
natural life but natural growth ? — freedom to bring themselves, 
as I have put it elsewhere, to their own perfection, there was 
a sheer denial of the right of the individual to grow in his own 
natural way, that is, in God's way. He had to develop not in 
God's way, but in the Board's way. The Board, National or 
Intermediate as the case might be, bound him hand and foot, 
chained him mind and soul, constricted him morally, men- 
tally and physically with the involuted folds of its rules and 
regulations, its programmes, its minutes, its reports and special 
reports, its pains and penalties. I have often thought that the 
type of English education in Ireland was the Laocoon : that 
agonising father and his sons seem to me like the teacher and 
the pupils of an Irish school, the strong limbs of the man and 
the slender limbs of the boys caught together and crushed to- 
gether in the grip of an awful fate. And English education in 
Ireland has seemed to some like the bed of Procustes, the bed 
on which all men that passed that way must lie, be it never so 
big for them, be it never so small for them: the traveller for 
whom it was too large had his limbs stretched until he filled it ; 
the traveller for whom it was too small had his limbs chopped 
off until he fitted into it — comfortably. It was a grim jest to 



128 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

play upon travellers. The English have done it to Irish chil- 
dren not by way of jest, but with a purpose. Our English- 
Irish systems took, and take, absolutely no cognisance of the 
differences between individuals, of the differences between 
localities, of the differences between urban and rural communi- 
ties, of the differences springing from a different ancestry, 
Gaelic or Anglo-Saxon. Every school must conform to a type — 
and what a type ! Every individual must conform to a type — 
and what a type I The teacher has not been at liberty, and in 
practice is not yet at liberty, to seek to discover the individual 
bents of his pupils, the hidden talent that is in every normal 
soul, to discover which and to cherish which, that it may in 
the fulness of time be put to some precious use, is the primary 
duty of the teacher. I knew one boy who passed through sev- 
eral schools a dunce and a laughing-stock ; the National Board 
and the Intermediate Board had sat in judgment upon him and 
had damned him as a failure before men and angels. Yet a 
friend and fellow-worker of mine discovered that he was gifted 
with a wondrous sympathy for nature, that he loved and un- 
derstood the ways of plants, that he had a strange minute- 
ness and subtlety of observation — that, in short, he was the sort 
of boy likely to become an accomplished botanist. I knew 
another boy of whom his father said to me: "He is no good 
at books, he is no good at work: he is good at nothing but 
playing a tin whistle. What am I to do with him ?" I shocked 
the worthy man by replying (though really it was the obvious 
thing to reply) : "Buy a tin whistle for him." Once a colleague 
of mine summed up the whole philosophy of education in a 
maxim which startled a sober group of visitors: "If a boy 
shows an aptitude for doing anything better than most people, 
he should be encouraged to do that, and to do it as well as 
possible ; I don't care what it is — scotch-hop, if you like." 

The idea of a compulsory programme imposed by an exter- 
nal authority upon every child in every school in a country is 
the direct contrary of the root idea involved in education. Yet 
this is what we have in Ireland. In theory the primary schools 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 129 

have a certain amount of freedom ; in practice they have none. 
Neither in theory nor in practice is such a thing as freedom 
dreamt of in the gloomy limbo whose presiding demon is the 
Board of Intermediate Education for Ireland. Education, in- 
deed, reaches its nadir in the Irish Intermediate system. At the 
present moment there are 15,000 boys and girls pounding at a 
programme drawn up for them by certain persons sitting round 
a table in Hume Street. Precisely the same text-books are be- 
ing read to-night in every secondary school and college in Ire- 
land. Two of Hawthorne's "Tanglewood Tales," with a few 
poems in English, will constitute the whole literary pabulum 
of three-quarters of the pupils of the Irish secondary schools 
during this twelvemonth.* The teacher who seeks to give 
his pupils a wider horizon in literature does so at his peril. He 
will, no doubt, benefit his pupils, but he will infallibly reduce 
his results fees. As an Intermediate teacher said to me, ''Cul- 
ture is all very well in its way, but if you don't stick to your 
programme your boys won't pass." "Stick to your programme" 
is the strange device on the banner of the Irish Intermediate 
system; and the programme bulks so large that there is no 
room for education. 

The first thing I plead for, therefore, is freedom : freedom 
for each school to shape its own programme in conformity 
with the circumstances of the school as to place, size, person- 
nel, and so on ; freedom again for the individual teacher to im- 
part something of his own personality to his work, to bring his 
own peculiar gifts to the service of his pupils, to be, in short, 
a teacher, a master, one having an intimate and permanent re- 
lationship with his pupils, and not a mere part of the educa- 
tional machine, a mere cog in the wheel; freedom finally for 
the individual pupil and scope for his development within the 
school and within the system. And I would promote this idea 
of freedom by the very organisation of the school itself, giving 
a certain autonomy not only to the school, but to the particular 

*1912-13. 



130 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

parts of the school: to the staff, of course, but also to the 
pupils and, in a large school, to the various sub-divisions of the 
pupils. I do not plead for anarchy. I plead for freedom with- 
in the law, for liberty, not licence, for that true freedom which 
can exist only where there is discipline, which exists in fact 
because each, valuing his own freedom, respects also the free- 
dom of others. 

VIII. 

BACK TO THE SAGAS. 

That freedom may be availed of to the noble ends of educa- 
tion there must be, within the school system and within the 
school, an adequate inspiration. The school must make such 
-an appeal to the pupil as shall resound throughout his after 
life, urging him always to be his best self, never his second-best 
:^self. Such an inspiration will come most adequately of all 
from religion. I do not think that there can be any education 
>of which spiritual religion does not form an integral part; as 
it is the most important part of life, so it should be the most 
iamportant part of education, which some have defined as a 
preparation for complete life. And inspiration will come also 
from the hero-stories of the world, and especially of our own 
people ; from science and art if taught by people who are really 
scientists and artists, and not merely persons with certificates 
from Mr. T. W. Kussell; from literature enjoyed as literature 
and not studied as "texts" ; from the associations of the school 
place; finally and chiefly from the humanity and great-heart- 
edness of the teacher. 

A heroic tale is more essentially a factor in education than 
a proposition in Euclid. The story of Joan of Arc or the story 
of the young Napoleon means more for boys and girls than all 
the algebra in all the books. What the modern world wants 
more than anything else, what Ireland wants beyond all other 
modern countries, is a new birth of the heroic spirit. If our 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 131 

schools would set themselves that task, the task of fostering 
once again knightly courage and strength and truth — that type 
of efficiency rather than the peculiar type of efficiency de- 
manded by the English Civil Service — we should have at least 
the beginning of an educational system. And what an appeal 
an Irish school system might have! What a rallying cry an 
Irish Minister of Education might give to young Ireland! 
When we were starting St. Enda's I said to my boys: "We 
must re-create and perpetuate in Ireland the knightly tradition 
of Cuchulaiun, 'better is short i.;,- \, 1 = 11 iiodui- liiau long life 
with dishonoi'' ; 'I care not though I were to live but one day 
and one night, if only my fame and my deeds live after me' ; the 
noble tradition of the Fianna, 'we, the Fianna, never told a lie, 
falsehood was never imputed to us'; 'strength in our hands, 
truth on our lips, and cleanness in our hearts' ; the Christ-like 
tradition of Colmcille, 'if I die it shall be from the excess of 
the love I bear the Gael.' " And to that antique evangel should 
be added the evangels of later days: the stories of Red Hugh 
and Wolfe Tone and Robert Emmet and John Mitchel and 
O'Donovan Rossa and Eoghan O'Growney. I have seen Irish 
boys and girls moved inexpressibly by the story of Emmet or 
the story of Anne Devlin, and I have always felt it to be 
legitimate to make use for educational purposes of an exalta- 
tion so produced. 

The value of the national factor in education would ap- 
pear to rest chiefly in this, that it addresses itself to the most 
generous side of the child's nature, urging him to live up to his 
finest self. If the true work of the teacher be, as I have said, to 
help the child to realise himself at his best and worthiest, the 
factor of nationality is of prime importance, apart from any 
ulterior propagandist views the teacher may cherish. The 
school system which neglects it commits, even from the purely 
pedagogic point of view, a primary blunder. It neglects one 
of the most powerful of educational resources. 

It is because the English education system in Ireland has 
deliberately eliminated the national factor that it has so terri- 



132 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

fically succeeded. For it has succeeded — succeeded in making 
slaves of us. And it has succeeded so well that we no longer 
realise that we are slaves. Some of us even think our chains 
ornamental, and are a little doubtful as to whether we shall 
be quite as comfortable and quite as respectable when they are 
hacked off. 

It remains the crowning achievement of the ^'National" 
and Intermediate systems that they have wrought such a 
change in this people that once loved freedom so passionately. 
Three-quarters of a century ago there still remained in Ire- 
land a stubborn Irish thing which Cromwell had not trampled 
out, which the Penal Laws had not crushed, which the horrors 
of '98 had not daunted, which Pitt had not purchased: a na- 
tional consciousness enshrined mainly in a national language. 
After three-quarters of a century's education that thing is 
nearly lost. 

A new education system in Ireland has to do more than 
restore a national culture. It has to restore manhood to a race 
that has been deprived of it. Along with its inspiration it 
must, therefore, bring a certain hardening. It must lead Ire- 
land back to her sagas. 

Finally, I say, inspiration must come from the teacher. If 
we can no longer send the children to the heroes and seers and 
scholars to be fostered, we can at least bring some of the heroes 
and seers and scholars to the schools. We can rise up against 
the system which tolerates as teachers the rejected of all other 
professions rather than demanding for so priestlike an ofiSce 
the highest souls and noblest intellects of the race. I remem- 
ber once going into a schoolroom in Belgium and finding an old 
man talking quietly and beautifully about literature to a silent 
class of boys; I was told that he was one of the most dis- 
tinguished of contemporary Flemish poets. Here was the sort 
of personality, the sort of influence, one ought to see in a 
schoolroom. Not, indeed, that every poet would make a good 
schoolmaster, or every schoolmaster a good poet. But how 
seldom here has the teacher any interest in literature at all; 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 133 

how seldom has he any horizon above his time-table, any soul 
larger than his results fees! 

The fact is that, with rare exceptions, the men and women 
who are willing to work under the conditions as to personal 
dignity, freedom, tenure, and emolument which obtain in Irish 
schools are not the sort of men and women likely to make good 
educators. This part of the subject has been so much discussed 
in public that one need not dwell upon it. We are all alive to 
the truth that a teacher ought to be paid better than a police- 
man, and to the scandal of the fact that many an able and cul- 
tured man is working in Irish secondary schools at a salary 
less than that of the Viceroy's chauifeur. 

IX. 

WHEN WE ARE FREE. 

In these chapters I have sufficiently indicated the general 
spirit in which I would have Irish education re-created. I say 
little of organisation, of mere machinery. That is the least im- 
portant part of the subject. We can all foresee that the first 
task of a free Ireland must be destructive: that the lusty 
strokes of Gael and Gall, Ulster taking its manful part, will 
hew away and cast adrift the rotten and worm-eaten boards 
which support the grotesque fabric of the English education 
system. We can all see that, when an Irish Government is con- 
stituted, there will be an Irish Minister of Education respon- 
sible to the Irish Parliament; that under him Irish education 
will be drawn into a homogeneous whole — an organic unity 
will replace a composite freak in which the various members 
are not only not directed by a single intelligence but are often 
mutually antagonistic, and sometimes engaged in open war- 
fare one with the other, like the preposterous donkey in the 
pantomime whose head is in perpetual strife with his heels be- 
cause they belong to different individuals. The individual en- 
tities that compose the English-Irish educational donkey are 
four: the Commissioners of National Education, the Commis- 



134 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

sioners of Intermediate Education, the Commissioners of Edu- 
cation for certain Endowed Schools, and last, but not least, the 
Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction — the 
modern loldanach which in this realm protects science, art, 
fishery, needlework, poultry, foods and drugs, horse-breeding, 
etc., etc., etc., etc., and whose versatile chiefs can at a moment's 
notice switch off their attention from archaeology in the Nile 
Valley to the Foot and Mouth Disease in MuUingar. I must 
admit that the educational work of the Department as far as 
it affects secondary schools is done efficiently; but one will 
naturally expect this branch of its activity to be brought into 
the general education scheme under the Minister of Education. 
In addition to the four Boards I have enumerated I need hardly 
say that Dublin Castle has its finger in the pie, as it has in 
every unsavory pie in Ireland. And behind Dublin Castle 
looms the master of Dublin Castle, and the master of all the 
Boards, and the master of everything in Ireland — the British 
Treasury — arrogating claims over the veriest details of educa- 
tion in Ireland for which there is no parallel in any other ad- 
ministration in the world and no sanction even in the British 
Constitution. My scheme, of course, presupposes the getting 
rid not only of the British Treasury, but of the British con- 
nection. 

One perceives the need, too, of linking up the whole system 
and giving it a common impulse. Under the Minister there 
might well be chiefs of the various sub-divisions, elementary, 
secondary, higher, and technical; but these should not be in- 
dependent potentates, each entrenched in a different stronghold 
in a different part of the city. I do not see why they could 
not all occupy offices in the same corridor of the same building. 
The whole government of the free kingdom of Belgium was 
carried on in one small building. A Council of some sort, with 
sub-committees, would doubtless be associated with the Min- 
ister, but I think its function should be advisory rather than 
executive ; that all acts should be the acts of the Minister. As 
to the local organisations of elementary schools, there will 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 135 

always be need of a local manager, and personally I see no 
reason why the local management should be given to a district 
council rather than left as it is at present to some individual in 
the locality interested in education, but a thousand reasons 
why it should not. I would, however, make the teachers, both 
primary and secondary, a national service, guaranteeing an 
adequate salary, adequate security of tenure, adequate promo- 
tion, and adequate pension : and all this means adequate en- 
dowment, and freedom from the control of parsimonious 
officials. 

In the matter of language I would order things bi-lingually. 
But I would not apply the Belgian system exactly as I have 
described it in An Claidheamh Soluis. The status quo in Ire- 
land is different from that in Belgium ; the ideal to be aimed at 
in Ireland is different from that in Belgium. Ireland is six- 
sevenths English-speaking with an Irish-speaking seventh. Bel- 
gium is divided into two nearly equal halves, one Flemish, the 
other French. Irish Nationalists would restore Irish as a verna- 
cular to the English-speaking six-sevenths, and would establish 
Irish as the national language of a free Ireland : Belgian Na- 
tionalists would simply preserve their "two national languages," 
according them equal rights and privileges. What then? Irish 
should be made the language of instruction in districts where it 
is the home language, and English the "second language," 
taught as a school subject : I would not at any stage use English 
as a medium of instruction in such districts, anything that I 
have elsewhere said as to Belgian practice notwithstanding. 
Where English is the home language it must of necessity be the 
"first language" in the schools, but I would have a compulsory 
"second language" satisfied that this "second language" in five- 
sixths of the schools would be Irish. And I would see that the 
"second language" be utilised as a medium of instruction from 
the earliest stages. In this way, and in no other way that I 
can imagine, can Irish be restored as a vernacular to English- 
speaking Ireland. 

But in all the details of their programmes the schools 



136 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

should have autonomy. The function of the central authority 
should be to co-ordinate, to maintain a standard, to advise, to 
inspire, to keep the teachers in touch with educational thought 
in other lands. I would transfer the centre of gravity of the 
system from the education office to the teachers ; the teachers in 
fact would be the system. Teachers, and not clerks, would 
henceforth conduct the education of the country. 

The inspectors, again, would be selected from the teachers, 
and the chiefs of departments from the inspectors. And pro- 
moted teachers would man the staffs of the training colleges, 
which, for the rest, would work in close touch with the univer- 
sities. 

I need hardly say that the present Intermediate system 
must be abolished. Good men will curse it in its passing. It 
is the most evil thing that Ireland has ever known. Dr. Hyde 
once finely described the National and Intermediate Boards as 

"Death and the nightmare Death-in-Life 
That thicks men's blood with cold." 

Of the tw-o Death-in-Life is the more hideous. It is sleeker 
than, but equally as obscene as, its fellow-fiend. The thing has 
damned more souls than the Drink Traffic or the White Slave 
Traffic. Down with it, — down among the dead men! Let it 
promote competitive examinations in the under-world, if it 
will. 

Well-trained and well-paid teachers, well-equipped and 
beautiful schools, and a fund at the disposal of each school to 
enable it to award prizes on its own tests based on its own 
programme — these would be among the characteristics of a 
new secondary system. Manual work, both indoor and out- 
door, would, I hope, be part of the programme of every school. 
And the internal organisation might well follow the models of 
the little child-republics I have elsewhere described, with their 
own laws and leaders, their fostering of individualities yet 
never at the expense of the commonwealth, their care for the 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 137 

body as well as for the mind, their nobly-ordered games, their 
spacious outdoor life, their intercourse with the wild things 
of the woods and wastes, their daily adventure face to face with 
elemental Life and Force, with its moral discipline, with its 
physical hardening. 

And then, vivifying the whole, we need the divine breath 
that moves through free peoples, the breath that no man of Ire- 
land has felt in his nostrils for so many centuries, the breath 
that once blew through the streets of Athens and that kindled, 
as wine kindles, the hearts of those who taught and learned in 
Clonmacnois. 



AN ARTICLE WRITTEN THREE WEEKS 
BEFORE THE RISING 

SINCE the outbreak of the European war, I have often 
asked myself, "Are we at war with England?" and have 
satisfied myself by replying in the affirmative. On deeper 
reflection I must say, our war with that country is only a war 
of words, one of lip and feeling. 

What are the signs of war, in the purely military sense? 
There are none, but is it so with the enemy ? Oh, no ; with her 
it is war, a real war towards us. Our casualty list is large 
between captured, imprisoned, and deported. By captured I 
mean those whom she has deluded and seduced into her ranks. 

Where are the successes on our side to offset such losses? 
Paltry, withal the enemy in our midst has not lost a single man. 

We all declare, and justly so, that until Ireland is restored 
to her place amongst the nations of the earth, come what may, 
we are at war with England. It is very patriotic, no doubt, and 
truly national, but what is the value of such declarations, if 
they be not supported by deeds ? 

I believe that the time has come for a strong and deter- 
mined offensive against all the entrenchments of the enemy in 
this country. The effect of such an offensive will be far-reach- 
ing. It will show our enemies that we are not conquered ; that 
we are still out for the liberty of one small nationality, Ire- 
land. It will cause an upheaval at home, the news of which 
will quickly reach our captured brethren abroad. If they have 
a trace of patriotism in their veins, and many of them have, 
they will not help the enemy that is shooting down their kith 
and kin at home. 

In short, an offensive at this moment may be the deciding 
factor in this war. The longer we delay, the better it will be 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 139 

for our enemies. They want no disturbance in Ireland, and 
will we help in their desire? 

Defeat in Ireland means more for the enemy than any de- 
feat she may sustain in Flanders or elsewhere. The only conse- 
quence to us is that some of us may be launched into eternity 
quicker and sooner than we would like. But who are we, that 
we should hesitate to die for Ireland ? 

Are not the claims of Ireland greater on us than any per- 
sonal ones? Do we not boast of our loyalty and love for the 
Dear Dark Head ? Is it fear that deters us from such an enter- 
prise? Away with such fears! Cowards die many times; the 
brave die only once. 

It is admitted that nothing but a revolution can now save 
the historic Irish nation from becoming a mere appanage, a 
Crown Colony, of the British Empire. We do not desire such 
a consummation of the Island of Saints and Scholars, the land 
of the O'Neills and the O'Donnells, the land for which the 
countless have suffered and died. 

We call ourselves revolutionists ; we glory in the name ; we 
speak with pride of the Dawn of the Day. Were there ever 
such revolutionists? We want the revolution to start us, and 
not us to start it. If we really want to free Ireland, now is the 
time for action. Are we afraid to start up like men and bear 
the consequences, or is all our talk mere frothing only to delude 
our enemies as well as our followers ? 

If we want the revolution, we must make it, and we must 
realize that such cannot be accomplished without bloodshed. 
We want war, for war justifies the removal of our enemies in 
the most expeditious manner. For that purpose we must know 
who our enemies are, and under no consideration must we allow 
them to interfere with the onward march of the Irish nation. 
Either we or they must fall in the fight. 

Some will cry out in horror at such a proposal. On what 
do they base their horror? Is it blood-spilling? Look at the 
war in Flanders. What blood is being spilled there daily ! Do 
these deaths awake in such people a shudder of horror ? No : 



140 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

war to them is justifiable in all countries except in Ireland. 
We are at war with England, and it is necessary that we should 
fight it to the bitter end. 

Look at the war in Flanders again. What are the motives 
underlying this struggle? Are these motives just and noble? 
Is Ireland's struggle with England more legitimate and more 
sacred? Yes, it is.* 

Our sufierings extend over centuries; no form of torture 
and persecution but England has tried on us. She is out for 
our conquest, and will stop at nothing to effect it. There is no 
hope for the future welfare of an independent Irish nation but 
in separation. 

God, in His wise providence, has separated us by the seas, 
but crafty, unscrupulous enemies bind us to that execrable 
government. 

If we remove these enemies, will separation follow ? I say 
and believe "yes". These enemies are the connecting links 
with Dublin Castle. They are the links that bind, and they 
shall remain while England holds this country. If we want 
to break the connection with England, we must remove these 
links, and we must render government by England impossible 
in this country. 

Is it an impossible task? Decidedly not. At the moment 
the minions of the government in Ireland stand trembling, 
afraid to disturb the people. They know their power is weak, 
and they are fearful lest any action of theirs may lose them 
their government, or at least may have an untoward effect on 
the Irish troops fighting for them in Flanders and elsewhere. 

I fear we do not realize our present strength and our 
enemies' weakness. Where is the British navy that we were 
told rules the waves? Recent events show that her ruling is 
now past. As for land forces, what has England to put against 
us? She needs every available man to meet the German offen- 



* (Ireland's attitude, both a right and a duty. — Editor.) 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 141 

sive. Even her conscript army will be needed. She may send 
some of them to Ireland, but are they such to make us fear? 

We are fighting for freedom; freedom, for everyone; they 
are only conscripts fighting against their will. We are super- 
ior to them in every respect. We know our country, and by 
a simultaneous and systematic action, we should shock, de- 
moralize, and rout them. 

Comrades, everything favors us. Now or never for the 
final onslaught. The shades of our immortal dead, the graves 
of the unavenged, the harrowing cries of our murdered priests, 
of our violated women, of the coffinless dead who are whitening 
the Atlantic's broad floor — all rise up and command us to do the 
noble deed, and fight the last fight for freedom.* 

We must not wait till the war is over. England will then 
be at peace, and will be free to send her reserves against us. 
Will we wait to fail, or will we fight now to win ? Yours is the 
choice. 

I am ready. For years I have waited and prayed for this 
day. We have the most glorious opportunity that has ever 
presented itself of really asserting ourselves. Such an oppor- 
tunity may never come again. We have Ireland's liberty in our 
hands. Will we be free-men, or are we content to remain as 
slaves and idly watch the final extermination of the Gael? 



' (What a noble appeal ! — Editor.) 



ORATION OF P. H. PEAESE OVER O'DONOVAN 
ROSSA'S GRAVE 

(August, 1915) 

IT has seemed right, before we turn away from this place in 
which we have laid the mortal remains of O'Donovan 
Rossa, that one amongst us should, in the name of all, 
speak the praise of that valiant man, and endeavour to for- 
mulate the thought and the hope that are in us as we stand 
around his grave. And if there is anything that makes it fitting 
that I, rather than some other — I, rather than one of the grey- 
haired men who were young with him, and shared in his labor 
and in suffering, — should speak here, it is, perhaps that I may be 
taken as speaking on behalf of a new generation that has been 
re-baptised in the Fenian faith, and that has accepted the 
responsibility of carrying out the Fenian programme. I pro- 
pose to you, then, that here by the grave of this unrepentant 
Fenian, we renew our baptismal vows; that here by the grave 
of this unconquered and unconquerable man, we ask of God, 
each one for himself, such unshakable purpose, such high and 
gallant courage, such unbreakable strength of soul as belonged 
to O'Donovan Rossa. 

Deliberately here we avow ourselves, as he avowed himself 
in the dock. Irishmen of one allegiance only. We of the Irish 
Volunteers, and you others who are associated with us in to- 
day's task and duty, are bound together, and must stand to- 
gether henceforth in brotherly union for the achievement of 
the freedom of Ireland. And we know only one definition of 
freedom : It is Tone's definition ; it is Mitchel's definition ; it is 
Rossa's definition. Let no man blaspheme the cause that the 
dead generations of Ireland served, by giving it any other name 
and definition than their name and their definition. 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 143 

We stand at Rossa's grave, not in sadness, but rather in 
exaltation of spirit that it has been given to us to come thus 
into so close a communion with that brave and splendid Gael. 
Splendid and holy causes are served by men who are themselves 
splendid and holy. O'Donovan Rossa was splendid in the proud 
manhood of him — splendid in the heroic grace of him, splendid 
in the Gaelic strength and clarity and truth of him. And all 
that splendor, and pride, and strength was compatible with a 
humility and a simplicity of devotion to Ireland, to all that was 
olden and beautiful and Gaelic in Ireland; the holiness and 
simplicity of patriotism of a Michael O'Cleary or of an Eoghan 
O'Growney. The clear true eyes of this man almost alone in 
his day visioned Ireland as we to-day would surely have her — 
not free merely but Gaelic as well; not Gaelic merely but free 
as weU. 

In a closer spiritual communion with him now than ever 
before, or perhaps ever again, in spiritual communion with 
those of his day living and dead, who suffered with him in Eng- 
lish prisons, in communion of spirit too with our own dear 
comrades who suffer in English prisons to-day, and speaking on 
their behalf as well as our own, we pledge to Ireland our love, 
and we pledge to English rule in Ireland our hate. This is a 
place of peace sacred to the dead, where men should speak with 
all charity and with all restraint ; but I hold it a sacred thing, 
as O'Donovan Rossa held it, to hate evil, to hate untruth, to 
hate oppression, and hating them, to strive to overthrow them. 
Our foes are strong, and wise, and wary ; but strong, and wise, 
and wary as they are, they cannot undo the miracles of God 
who ripens in the hearts of young men the seeds sown by the 
young men of a former generation. And the seeds sown by 
the young men of '65 and '67 are coming to their miraculous 
ripening to-day. Rulers and defenders of Realms had need to 
be wary if they would guard against such processes. Life 
springs from death, and from the graves of patriot men and 
women spring live nations. The defenders of this realm have 
worked well in secret and in the open. They think that they 



144 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

have pacified Ireland. They think that they have purchased 
half of us, and intimidated the other half. They think that they 
have foreseen everything. They think that they have provided 
against everything; but the fools, the fools, the fools. They 
have left us our Fenian dead, and while Ireland holds these 
graves, Ireland unfree shall never be at peace.* 



*(Some who heard Pearse that day in Glasnevin told me that the 
effect of this speech was extraordinary ; frequently I was told that it 
was this speech more than anything else that made Pearse known in 
Ireland. Most Volunteers know it by heart. — Editor.) 



THE FUTURE OF THE GAEL 

Delivered as Inaugural Address of the Session^ 1897-98, of 
THE New England Literary Society^ Dublin^ October^ 1897.* 

^ ^^T^HE Intellectual Future of the Gael," is a subject 
I which must, from its very nature, be of the deepest 
-*" interest to us; a subject which must be fascinating 
not only to men and women of Gaelic race, but to all who have 
at heart the great causes of civilization, education, and pro- 
gress ; to all who bow before the ''might of mind," the majesty 
of intellect; to all, in short, who take an interest in the intel- 
lectual life of mankind — and this is, after all, the true life, for 
life without intellect is death. To all these, then, but especially 
to us — to us. Irishmen, young, ardent, enthusiastic, trying to 
grope amid the darkness for a path to higher things — no ques- 
tion can be of more absorbing interest than this: What has 
destiny in store for this ancient race of ours ? Is our noonday 
of glory gone by for ever? Or have we still a future before us 
more glorious than we have ever dreamt of in our moments of 
wildest enthusiasm? 

May it not be that the ends we have struggled for were 
ends never intended for the Gael? The Gael is a splendid sol- 
dier; yet it is extremely problemat,ic whether we shall ever be 
a great military nation like France. The Gael is, and always 
has been a cunning artificer, a subtle mechanic ; yet it is almost 
certain that we shall never be a great manufacturing or com- 
mercial nation like England. Does it not seem that a nobler 
destiny than either of these awaits us? We are tempted to cry- 
aloud in our despair, "O God! will the morning never come?" 
Yes, the morning will come, and its dawn is not far off. But 



*(Pearse was only seventeen years of age when he delivered this. — 
Editor.) 



146 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

it will be a morning different from the morning we have looked 
for. The Gael is not like other men ; the spade, and the loom, 
and the sword are not for him. But a destiny more glorious 
than that of Rome, more glorious than that of Britain awaits 
him : to become the savior of idealism in modern intellectual 
and social life, the regenerator and rejuvenator of the litera- 
ture of the world, the instructor of the nations, the preacher of 
the gospel of nature-worship, hero-worship, God-worship — such, 
Mr. Chairman, is the destiny of the Gael.Jl^i 

Before I proceed to fill in this outline it may be well if 
I digress for a few moments, to consider what races have, up to 
the present, contributed most to the intellectual advancement 
of mankind. First of all occurs to every mind the names of the 
Greeks — the pioneers of intellectual progress in Europe. Who 
can refuse his admiration to the nation which poured forth a 
stream of fire which today, after the lapse of three thousand 
years, is still enlightening and elevating mankind? Mighty 
changes have passed over tlie earth during those three thou- 
.sand years ; but the epic sung so long ago by 

"The blind old man of Scio's rocky isle," 

still instructs, and benefits, and delights us. The world's 
greatest epic poet, the world's greatest orator, several of the 
world's greatest lyric poets, dramatists, and philosophers — 
these has Greece given to the human race. Next came the 
Roman : but the Roman directed his splendid energies towards 
other ends, and, beyond the work accomplished by one or two 
great men, his influence on intellectual history has not been 
great — has not, by any means, been proportional to what he 
might have done. Amongst modem nations those which have 
contributed most to the intellectual welfare of mankind are 
undoubtedly Italy and England. It is the great men of these 



*(To this faith, too, I hold, being intellectually convinced that it 
is true. — Editor.) 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 147 

nations along with those of Greece that have made the litera- 
ture of the world. 

But is it not unquestionable that the influence of these 
men — the Homers, and Dantes, and Shakespeares, and Miltons 
— is gradually growing less and less ? Is it not unquestionable 
also that at the present moment no literature is being produced 
in Europe, or in the world worthy of the name ? The vigorous 
minds of the day are engaged in producing writings which 
must, from their nature, be purely ephemeral — criticisms, re- 
views, magazine articles — things which, however excellent and 
highly-finished in themselves, are, as a rule, forgotten as soon as 
read. Two or three writers are making desperate efforts to 
achieve fame by selecting the most outre and absolutely start- 
ling subjects to write of which even their prolific brains can 
devise. Nowadays no author can hope for popularity unless, 
like one popular novelist, he goes to Hell for a hero, or, like an- 
other, he makes a practice of libelling all that is sacred and 
sublime under pretence of zeal for liberty and truth. One novel 
has Satan for its hero, another has God for its villain. 

Now, this may be modern, and up-to-date, and all that; but, 
I ask, is it pure, good, healthy, natural literature? Is it litera- 
ture which tends to exalt the soul, to make us better, holier, 
happier? No, Mr. Chairman, emphatically no. The truth of 
the matter is that the intellectual and literary tastes of the 
world have been carried away by a craving for the unreal, for 
the extravagant, for the monstrous, for the immoral. Men's 
tastes have become vitiated. There is no healthy out-of-door at- 
mosphere in modern literature. Literature has arrived, in 
short, at a state of unnatural senility, and the time seems not 
far off when either of two things must happen — either intellect 
and literature must disappear from modern life, and with them 
everything that makes life worth living, or some new and un- 
polluted source must be opened up, some new blood must be 
infused into the intellectual system of the world, which has 
become prematurely worn out. Now, whence is this new blood 
to come ? The answer is plain ; there is but one race among the 



148 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

races of today, which possesses a literature natural and un- 
contaminated ; there is but one race which possesses 
an intellectual wealth which though as old as history, is 
yet young and vigorous and healthy, and has a future before it 
rich with undeveloped possibilities. Needless to say, Mr. 
Chairman, this race is the Gaelic race — a race whose literature 
was different from the unnatural literature of today as the 
pure radiance of the sun is different from the hideous glare of 
the electric light, as the free breath of heaven is different from 
the stifling atmosphere of a crowded theatre or music hall. 

I have indicated, then, Mr. Chairman, what seems to me 
to be the true mission of the Gael, and it will be seen that in 
this mission the creation, or rather the propagation, of a nature- 
literature plays a most important part. I do not say the crea- 
tion of a nature-literature, for the excellent reason that it has 
not to be created : as a matter of fact it already exists, and only 
wants to be developed, to be matured, to be expanded. Now, 
this literature is totally different from every other literature in 
the world, and this is one of the reasons why it proves so en- 
trancing to everyone who makes a study of it. Gaelic literature, 
we should remember, has grown up among and been developed 
by the Gael alone. Its sources of inspiration have been entirely 
native, and in this one point, at least, it can claim superiority 
even to Greek literature itself. As regards manner and style, 
it has been absolutely uninfluenced by the literature of any 
other nation. This is why it is so unique, so peculiar, so unlike 
everything else we are accustomed to, so refreshing — that is the 
proper word to apply to it. It has a quaint, old-world magic, 
and charm, and glamor that mark it as peculiarly fit to ac- 
complish the reformation we have seen to be so necessary. 

To give a more accurate idea of the form this reformation 
is to take, and of its effects, I would draw special attention to 
two points in the temperament of the Gael ; his love for nature, 
and his veneration for the heroes. The intellectual life and 
atmosphere of the present day are, as I have said, nothing if 
not unnatural. The Gael, on the other hand, like all the Celts, 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 149 

is distinguished by an intense and passionate love for nature. 
The Gael is the high-priest of nature. He loves nature not 
merely as something grand, and beautiful and wonderful, but 
as something possessing a mystic connection with and influence 
over man. In the cry of the seagull as he winged his solitary 
flight over the Atlantic waves, in the shriek of the eagle as he 
wheeled around the heights of the Kerry Mountains, in the 
note of the throstle as she sang her evening lay in the woods of 
Slieve Grot, in the roar of the cataract as it floated and splashed 
down the rocky ravine, in the sob of the ocean as it beat unceas- 
ing against the cliffs of Achill, in the sigh of the wind as it 
moved, ghostlike, through the oaks of Derrybawn — in all these 
sounds the ancient Gael heard a music unheard by other men, 
all these sounds spoke to his inmost heart in whispers myster- 
ious and but half understood : they spoke to him as the voices 
of his ancestors urging him to be noble and true — as the voices 
of the glorious dead calling to him across the waters from Tir 
na n-Og. 

The Gael believed, too, that the earth, and the air, and the 
sea were filled with strange beings that exerted a mysterious 
but potent influence over him. Everyone who has the slightest 
acquaintance with Gaelic literature knows how this belief 
appears and reappears on every page ; how the creatures of the 
upper air and the beasts of the forest are represented as sym- 
pathizing with the changing fortunes of men; how, during a 
battle, the blackbird wails in the wood, the sea chatters telling 
of the slaughter, the rough hills creak with terror at the 
assault; and how, when anything remarkable occurs, such as 
the death of a hero, or the overwhelming of a favorite champion 
by unequal odds, the three great Waves of Erie cry out — the 
furious red Wave of Eudhraighe, the foam-stormy, ship-sinking 
Wave of Cliodhna, and the flood-high, bank-swollen Wave of 
Tuagh. 

Closely connected with, and, indeed, directly dependent on 
this love of the Gael for nature, is his capacity for worshipping 
his heroes. Hero-worship, no doubt, is often carried to ex- 



150 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

tremes; we are prone too frequently to mistake the hero lor 
the cause, to place the man before the principle. But there 
can be no doubt that hero-worship, in its highest form, is a 
soul-lifting and ennobling thing. What would the world be 
without its heroes? Greece without her Hercules and her 
Achilles, Rome without her Romulus and her Camillus, Eng- 
land without her Arthur and her Richard, Ireland without her 
Cuchulainn and her Fionn, Christianity without its Loyolas 
and its Xaviers? And Avhat is true of hero-worship in general 
is true, in an especial manner, of the hero-worship of the Gael. 
When great men died the ancient Gael did not believe that they 
had passed away for ever from human ken — he believed, on the 
contrary, that their spirits lingered round the lonely hills and 
glens, round old moss-grown lioses and crumbling duns, round 
the haunted sidhe-bnighs and fairy raths — he believed that they 
hovered near their children, watching over them and taking an 
interest in their every action. Now, when a man believes that 
the spirits of the mighty dead, the spirits of those he has loved 
and venerated, are near him and watching over him, he cannot 
but endeavor to make himself nobler, better, worthier of the 
great ones, who have preceded him. 

''Lives of great men all remind us 
We can make our lives sublime. 
And departing leave behind us 
Footprints on the sands of time." 

The spirit of these words of the great modern American 
poet was perfectly understood by the ancient Gael. Fearghus, 
Conchubhar, Cuchulainn, Fionn, Oisin, Oscar — these were 
more to the Gael than the mere names of great champions and 
warriors of a former time: they represeilted to him men who 
had gone before, who had fought the good fight, who had passed 
from earth to the mystic Tir na nog, who had become gods — 
but whose spirits, heroic and immortal, still lived after them. 
And though well-nigh two thousand years have rolled away 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 151 

since those mighty heroes trod this land of ours, yet is their 
spirit not dead : it lives on in our poetry, in our music, in our 
language, and, above all, in the vague longings which we feel 
for a something, we know not what — our irresistible, overmas- 
tering conviction that we, as a nation, are made for higher 
things. Oh ! that this hero-spirit were stronger than it is ! Oh ! 
that men could be brought to realize that they are men, not 
animals — that they could be brought to realize that, though "of 
the earth, earthy," yet that there is a spark of divinity within 
them ! And men can be brought to realize this by the propaga- 
tion of a literature like that of the Gael — to which natural love 
and hero-love shall form the keywords, a literature which shall 
glorify all that is worthy of glory — beauty, strength, manhood, 
intellect, and religion. 

The mission of the Gael, however, will not be confined 
merely to the propagation of this literature. The Gael is, in 
the fullest sense of the word, an idealist; he is, in fact, the 
idealist amongst the nations. All that is beautiful, noble, true 
or grand will always find in him a devotee. He revels in imag- 
ination. He loves to gaze on what is beautiful, to listen to 
sweet and rapturous sounds. Hence, painting, sculpture, music, 
oratory, the drama, learning, all those things which delight and 
ravish the human soul, which stir up in it mighty, convulsive 
passions, and strange indefinable yearnings after the Great 
Unknown, all those things which seem, as it were, links between 
humanity and Divinity — these will ever find among the Gael 
their most ardent and accomplished disciples. What the Greek 
was to the ancient world the Gael will be to the modern ; and 
in no point will the parallel prove more true than in the fer- 
vent and noble love of learning which distinguishes botli 
races. The Gael, like the Greek, loves learning, and like the 
Greek, he loves it solely for its own sake. For centuries, when 
it was sought by penal legislation to deprive him of it, when the 
path to honor and wealth was closed to him, and when leani- 
ing could be of no advantage to him at least from a worldly 
point of view, still did he cling to it. The spirit which animated 



152 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

our O'Clerys and our Keatings still animated their humbler 
successors. The hunted priests and schoolmasters of the seven- 
teenth and eighteenth centuries carried about with them from 
cave to cave, and from glen to glen, not only copies of the 
Gospels, but copies of the Greek and Latin classics, and vol- 
umes of old Gaelic poetry, history, and romance. Hundreds of 
young men are annually turned out of our modern universities 
with a classical education far inferior to that imparted in the 
hedge-schools of Munster during the last century. When love 
of learning is so deeply implanted in the heart of the Gael that 
not even persecution, penury, and degradation can eradicate it, 
surely it ought to blaze forth with ten-fold brilliancy when the 
night is past and the morn is come. The dream of the great 
English cardinal may yet come true : 

"I contemplate," says John Henry Newman, "a people 
which has had a long night and will have an inevitable day. I 
am turning my eyes toward a hundred years to come,* and I 
dimly see the island I am gazing on become the road of pass- 
age between two hemispheres, and the centre of the world : I 
see its inhabitants rival Belgium in populousness, France in 
vigor, and Spain in enthusiasm ; and I see England taught by 
advancing years to exercise in its behalf that good sense which 
is her characteristic towards everyone else. The capital of that 
prosperous and hopeful land is situate on a beautiful bay, and 
near a romantic region ; and in it I see a flourishing university. 
. . . Thither as to a sacred soil, the home of their fathers, the 
fountain-head of their Christianity, students are flocking from 
east and west, and south — from America, from Australia and 
India, from Egypt and Asia Minor, with the ease and rapidity 
of a locomotion not yet discovered ; and last, though not least, 
from England ... all owning one faith, all eager for one large 
true wisdom; and thence, when their stay is over, going back 
again to carry over all the earth 'Peace to men of good will.' " 

I am aware, Mr. Chairman, that there are many here who 



♦(The Day of tlie Dawn is near. — Editor.) 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 153 

may consider that the picture I have drawn is a far too rosy 
one, who may say that "The Intellectual Future of the Gael" 
is an excellent theme on which one may wax eloquent — is a 
catchy title, perhaps, for the Inaugural Address of a Literary 
Society — but that, beyond this, the talk about nature-litera- 
ture, about hero-love, and the rest, is little more than the raving 
of an enthusiast. Well, Mr. Chairman, I admit that I am an 
enthusiast, and I glory in being one. To those who would ob- 
ject that the sketch I have attempted to give of the intellectual 
future of our race is a mere ideal picture, I would reply that it 
is intended as an ideal picture. If you wish to accomplish 
anything great place an ideal before you, and endeavor to live 
up to that ideal. 

Now, has the Gael been able to attain the ideals he has 
hitherto placed before him, or does it appear likely that he ever 
will? Assuredly not. Nothing seems to me so certain, nothing 
seems to me so logical a consequence of our temperament, of our 
history, of our present circumstances, as that, if we are to have 
any future, it must be an intellectual future. And is there any- 
one who would not prefer such a future? It is, no doubt, a 
glorious thing to rule over many subject peoples, to dictate laws 
to far-oflf countries, to receive every day cargoes of rich mer- 
chandise from every clime beneath the sun; but if to do these 
things we must become a soulless, intellectual, Godless race — 
and it seems that one is the natural and necessary consequence 
of the other — then let us have none of them. Do the millions 
that make up the population of modern nations — the millions 
that toil and sweat, from year's end to year's end, in the mines 
and factories of England, the Continent, and the United States 
— live the life intended for man? Have they intellect? Have 
they soul? Are they conscious of man's dignity, of man's 
greatness? Do they understand the grandeur of living, and 
breathing, and working out one's destiny on this beautiful old 
earth? The sea, with its mighty thunderings, and its myster- 
ious whisperings, the blue sky of day, the dark and solemn 
-canopy of night spangled with its myriad stars, the mountains 



154 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

and hills steeped in the magic of poetry and romance — what 
are these things to them? What are the hero-memories of the 
past to them ? Are they one whit the better because great men 
have lived, and wrought and died? Were the destiny of the 
Gael no higher than theirs, better for him would it have been, 
had he disappeared from the earth centuries ago. 

Intellect and soul, a capacity for loving the beautiful 
things of nature, a capacity for worshipping what is grand and 
noble in man, these things we have yet: let us not cast them 
from us in the mad rush of modern life. Let us cherish them, 
let us cling to them: they have come down to us through the 
storms of centuries — the bequest of our hero-sires of old; and 
when we are a power on earth again, we shall owe our power, 
not to fame in war, in statesmanship, or in commerce, but to 
those two precious inheritances, intellect and soul. 

Another thousand years will have rolled over the earth, and 
the bard, and the scanchaidh, and the teacher of the Gael, will 
once more be held in honor. A better, purer, and happier world 
will be listening in rapt amazement to the grand old epics and 
time-honored sgealta of our race. Men's gods will no longer be 
empire, ambition, and gold: but the homage that is paid to 
those things today will be paid in that happy age, as it was in 
days of yore, on the hills and in the valleys of Eire, to the 
mysterious potencies of nature, the beauty and virtue of woman, 
the heroic dignity of man, the awful and incomprehensible 
majesty of the Divinity. This, Mr. Chairman, will be the gospel 
of the future ; and to preach this gospel — world-old, yet new, so 
true, yet so little realized, so beautiful, and so ennobling — will 
be the mission of the children of the Gael. 



EDUCATION 

P. H. Pearse 
(From An Macaomh, Christmas, 1909) 

ALL the problems with which we strive were long ago 
solved b}' our ancestors, only their solutions have 
been forgotten. Take the problem of education, the 
problem, that is, of bringing up a child. We constantly speak 
and write as if a philosophy of education were first formulated 
in our own time. But all wise peoples, of old, faced and solved 
that problem for themselves, but most of their solutions were 
better than ours. Professor Culverwell thinks that the Jews 
gave it the best solution. For my part, I take off my hat to the 
old Irish. The philosophy of education is preached now, but it 
was practised by the founders of the Gaelic system two thou- 
sand years ago. Their very names for ^'education" and 
''teacher" and "pupil" show that they had gripped the heart 
of the problem. The word for "education" among the old 
Gaels was the same as the word for "fostering"; the teacher 
was a "fosterer" and the pupil was a "foster-child." Now "to 
foster" is exactly the function of a teacher; not primarily to 
"lead up," to "guide," to "conduct through a course of studies," 
and still less to "indoctrinate" to "inform," to "prepare for 
exams," but primarily to "foster" the elements of character 
already present. I put this another way in the first number of 
An Macaomh when I wrote that the true work of the teacher 
may be said to be to help the child to realise himself at his best 
and worthiest. One does not want to make each of one's pu- 
pils a replica of oneself (God forbid), holding the self-same 
opinions, prejudices, likes, illusions. Neither does one want to 
drill all one's pupils into so many regulation little soldiers or 
so many stodgy little citizens, though this is apparently the aim 



156 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

of some of the most cried-up of modern systems. The true 
teacher will recognize in each of his pupils an individual human 
soul^ distinct and different from every other human soul that 
has ever been fashioned by God, miles and miles apart from the 
soul that is nearest and most akin to it, craving, indeed, com- 
radeship and sympathy and pity, needing also it may be discip- 
line and guidance and a restraining hand, but imperiously de- 
manding to be allowed to live its own life, to be allowed to bring 
itself to its own perfection; because for every soul there is a 
perfection meant for it alone, and which it alone is capable of 
attaining. So the primary office of the teacher is to ^'foster" 
that of good which is native to the soul of his pupil, striving to 
bring its inborn excellences to ripeness rather than to implant 
in it excellences exotic to its nature. It comes to this then, 
that the education of a child is greatly a matter, in the first 
place, of congenial environment and, next to this, of a wise and 
loving watchfulness whose chief appeal will be to the finest 
instincts of the child itself. In truth, I think that the old 
Irish plan of education, as idealised for boys in the story of 
the Macradh of Emhain and for girls in that of the Grianan of 
Lusga, was the wisest and most generous that the world has 
ever known. The bringing together of children in some pleasant 
place under the fosterage of some man famous among his 
people for his greatness of heart, for his wisdom, for his skill 
in some gracious craft, — here we get the two things on which 
I lay most stress in education, the environment, and the stim- 
ulus of a personality which can address itself to the child's 
worthiest self. Then, the charter of free government within 
certain limits, the right to make laws and maintain them, to 
elect and depose leaders, — here was scope for the growth of in- 
dividualities yet provision for maintaining the suzerainty of 
the common weal; the scrupulous co-relation of moral, intel- 
lectual and physical training, the open-air life, the very type 
of the games which formed so large a part of their learning, — 
all these things were designed with a largeness of view foreign 
to the little minds that devise our modern makeshifts for edu- 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 157 

cation. Lastly, the '*aite/' fosterer or teacher, had as col- 
leagues, in his work of fosterage no ordinary hirelings, but 
men whom their gifts of soul, or mind, or body, had lifted high 
above their contemporaries, — the captains, the poets, the pro- 
phets of their people. 

Civilization has taken such a queer turn that it might not 
be easy to restore the old Irish plan of education in all its de- 
tails. Our heroes and seers and scholars would not be so will- 
ing to add a Boy-Corps or a Grianan to their establishments as 
were their prototypes in Ireland from time immemorial till the 
fall of the Gaelic polity. I can imagine how blue Dr. Hyde, Mr. 
Yeats, and Mr. MacNeill would look if their friends informed 
them that they were about to send them their children to be 
fostered. But, at least, we can bring the heroes and seers and 
scholars to the schools (as we do at Sgoil Eanna) and get them 
to talk to the children ; and we can rise up against the system 
which tolerates as teachers the rejected of all other professions 
rather than demanding for so priest-like an office the highest 
souls and noblest intellects of the race. I think, too, that the 
little child-republics I have described, with their own laws and 
their own leaders, their life face to face with nature, their care 
for the body as well as for the mind, their fostering of individ- 
ualities yet never at the expense of the commonwealth, ought 
to be taken as models for all our modern schools. But I must 
not be misunderstood. In pleading for an attractive school- 
life, I do not plead for making school-life one long and grand 
picnic : I have no sympathy for the sentimentalists who hold 
that we should surround children with an artificial happiness, 
shutting out from their ken pain and sorrow and retribution 
and the world's law of unending strife; the key-note of the 
school-life I desiderate is "efort" on the part of the child him- 
self, struggle, self-sacrifice, self-discipline, for by these things 
only does the soul rise to perfection. I believe in gentleness, 
but not in softness. I would not place too heavy a burden on 
young shoulders, but I would see that no one, boy or man, 
shirks the burden he is strong enough to bear. 



FROM A HERMITAGE 

(Pamphlet by P. H. Pearse, 1913-1914) 

UPON the dragon-fly a literature might be written. The 
dragon-fly is one of the most beautiful and terrible 
things in nature. It flashes by you like a winged 
emerald or ruby or turquoise. Scrutinise it at close quarters 
and you will find yourself comparing its bulky little round 
head, with its wonderful eyes and its cruel jaws, to the beau- 
tiful cruel head of a tiger. The dragon-fly among insects is in 
fact as the tiger amongst beasts, as the hawk among birds, as 
the shark among fish, as the lawyer among men, as England 
among nations. It is the destroyer, the eater-up, the cannibal. 
Two dragon-flies will fight until nothing remains but two heads. 
So ferocious an eater-up is the dragon-fly that it is said that, 
in the absence of other bodies to eat up, it will eat up its own 
body until nothing is left but the head, and it would doubtless 
eat its own head if it could ; a feat which would be remarkable 
as the feat of the saint, recorded, by Carlyle and recalled by 
Mitchell, who swam across the channel carrying his decapitated 
head in his teeth. The dragon-fly is the type of greedy ascend- 
ancy — a sinister head preying upon its own vitals. The largest 
and most wonderful dragon-flies I have seen in Ireland haunt 
the lovely woods that fringe the shores of Lough Corrib, near 
Cong. And at Cong, I remember, there is a great lord who has 
pulled down many homes that no ascending smoke may mar 
the sylvan beauty of his landscape. 

* « * * 

Poverty, starvation, social unrest, crime are incidental to 
the civilization of such states as England and America, where 
immense masses of people are herded in great Christless cities 
and the bodies and souls of men are exploited in the interests of 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 15 9 

wealth. But these conditions do not to any extent exist in 
Ireland. We have not great cities ; we have hardly any ruthless 
capitalists exploiting immense masses of men. Yet in Ireland 
we have dire and desperate poverty; we have starvation; we 
have social unrest. Ireland is capable of feeding twenty mil- 
lion people; we are barely four million. Why do so many of 
us starve ? Before God, I believe that the root of the matter lies 
in foreign domination. A free Ireland would not, and could 
not, have hunger in her fertile vales and squalor in her cities. 
Ireland has resources to feed five times her population ; a free 
Ireland would make those resources available. A free Ireland 
would drain the bogs, would harness the rivers, would plant the 
wastes, would nationalise the railways and waterways, and 
would improve agriculture, would protect fisheries, would pro- 
mote commerce, would foster industries, would diminish ex- 
travagant expenditure (as on needless judges and policemen), 
would beautify the cities, would educate the workers (and also 
the non- workers, who stand in dire need of it), would, in short, 
govern herself as no external power — nay, not even a govern- 
ment of angels and arch-angels — could govern her. For free- 
dom is the condition of sane life, and in slavery, if we have no 
death, we have the more evil thing which the poet has named 
Death-in-Life. The most awful wars are the wars that take 
place in dead or quasi-dead bodies when the fearsome things 
that death breeds go forth to prey upon one another and upon 
the body that is their parent. 



Keating (whom I take to be the greatest of Irish Nation- 
alist poets) used a terrific phrase of the Ireland of his day; he 
called her "the harlot of England." Yet Keating's Ireland was 
the magnificent Ireland in which Rory O'More planned and 
Owen Roe battled. What would he say of this Ireland? His 
phrase if used today would no longer be a terrible metaphor, 
but would be a more terrible truth; a truth literal and exact. 



160 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

For is not Ireland's body given up to the pleasure of another, 
and is not Ireland's honor for sale in the market-place ? 



My priest on my desert island spoke to me glowingly about 
the Three who died at Manchester. He spoke to me too of the 
rescue of Kelly and Deasy from the prison van and of the ring 
of armed Fenians keeping the Englishry at bay. I have often 
thought that that was the most memorable moment in recent 
Irish history : and that that ring of Irishmen spitting fire from 
revolver barrels, while an English mob cowered out of range, 
might well serve as a symbol of the Ireland that should be; of 
the Ireland that shall be. Next Sunday we shall pay homage 
to them and to their deed ; were it not a fitting day for each of 
us to resolve that we too will be men ? 



DANIEL O'CONNELL AND SINN FEIN 

By Professor Eoin Mac Nbill^ 1915 

(Part I.) 

O'CONNELL'S ALTERNATIVE. 

DANIEL O'CONNELL was a Constitutionalist. It is an 
awkward word to pronounce, making a strong show in 
front, but somewhat paralytic in the hindquarters. It 
requires, in fact, an artificial emphasis on the last syllable. 

O'Connell was the father of Constitutionalism, the inventor 
of modern democratic constitutional politics. Before O'Con- 
nell, there never was a leader of the democracy against oppres- 
sion and misgovernment that was not prepared to use physical 
force if he found it necessary and opportune. O'Connell was 
the first democratic leader in all history to rule physical force 
out of order altogether. He was a Constitutionalist, the first 
Constitutionalist, and the extreme Constitutionalist. 

Several causes combined to make O'Connell adopt Con- 
stitutionalism as the chief article of his political creed. In his 
youth he had seen the apparent failure of the Irish Volunteers, 
of the United Irishmen, and of the Rising of '98, with the ap- 
parent consequence of the Union and its attendant evils. It may 
be easier now than in his time to recognise that, if Irishmen 
had not taken up arms and organised themselves for the libera- 
tion of their country, their subjugation would have been no less 
inevitable, and probably more complete. It was in a large 
measure the stand they made, though apparently unsuccessful, 
that kept the national spirit and the national purpose alive in 
spite of the Union. It was by the new method of constitutional 



162 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

agitation that O'Connell carried Catholic Emancipation. This 
led him to imagine that the powers of constitutional agitation 
were irresistible. We can see it in the definite assurances he 
afterwards gave of winning Repeal of the Union, while in the 
same utterances he committed himself and his followers to 
complete avoidance of physical force. And yet the Duke of 
Wellington, a renowned military commander, publicly con- 
fessed that Catholic Emancipation was yielded up unwillingly, 
not to O'Connell's constitutional campaign, but to the fear that 
the demand might soon take a stronger form. Later still, 
when English parties recognised that O'Connell was obstinate- 
ly committed to Constitutionalism, they treated him wdth con- 
tempt, and with worse than contempt. Lest he should move 
an inch beyond his magic line, they made a criminal of him for 
a mere metaphorical semblance of resort to physical force, 
and they broke him. 

Another thing that made Constitutionalism a fetish to 
O'Connell was his killing of D'Esterre in a duel. In this act 
O'Connell's conscience recognised a crime. He looked back on 
it with horror. 

Finally, an element of faction in O'Connell's later position 
prevented him from seeing the fallacy of his extreme Constitu- 
tionalism, when it should have been as plain as day to him. It 
must be remembered that a majority can be a faction, and that 
the leaders of a majority can be factionists. The failure of 
O'Connell's constitutional methods to make headway towards 
Eepeal brought about the formation of the Young Ireland 
element in his party, and his resistance to Young Ireland made 
him the partisan of his own failure. He became the head of a 
constitutionalist faction, a faction that put the leader, the 
party, and the programme above the Nation and the cause. 
Irishmen of our own time should beware lest they become 
partisans of failure. O'ConneU went to great extremes in de- 
nouncing Young Ireland and arousing against them a certain 
kind of ecclesiastical suspicion, and this he did the more easily 
because the panic created by the French Revolution was still 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 163 

strongly operative in Catholic ecclesiastical circles. "And we 
are not through even yet with the French panic." 

Constitutionalism may be made effective to bring about re- 
dress and reform under a constitutional government and 
against constitutional opposition. In any other state of things, 
it is of less value, of much less value, than the crackling of 
thorns under a pot. But to O'Connell, Constitutionalism be- 
came a second religion. Let us bear in mind that O'Connell 
was the ne plus ultra of Constitutionalism. 

There are those in Ireland today who claim for their own 
particular programme the title of The Constitutional Move- 
ment. Whoever goes beyond that programme, they would have 
you believe, is a dark revolutionary. Daniel O'Connell, the 
ultra-Constitutionalist, went far beyond the programme of these 
people, who on the other hand have done, planned, and approved 
many things that O'Connell would have forbidden. O'Connell's 
political principles were in fact neither more nor less than the 
principles of "Sinn Fein." 

O'Connell held and laid down that the Act of Union was 
null and void, that it was not morally binding, that its persis- 
tence was rightly calculated to lead to a desire and a demand 
for the complete separation of Ireland from Great Britain, and 
that separation was the only tolerable alternative to Repeal of 
the Union and restoration of Irish legislative independence. To 
the semi-Constitutionalists of today, these tenets of the ultra- 
Constitutional O'Connell are revolutionary and contemptible, 
for, while they preach trust in the man next door and lavish af- 
fection on him, they declare Irishmen who hold O'Connell's 
views to be their enemies and affect to make "Sinn Fein" a 
term of hatred and contempt. And this attitude of theirs is 
most pronounced at the very time when they profess to hail 
with pleasure, the advent of "unity and good will throughout 
Ireland." 

Unity and goodwill embraces the Ascendancy man, the 
Evictor, the Whig, the West Briton, the Seoinin, and excom- 
municates and outlaws every man who stands for Ireland in 



164 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

preference to any other country, to any empire, or to any com- 
bination of empires. Such a man is a Sinn Feiner, and that is 
enough. Down with him ! Well, Daniel O'Connell was a Sinn 
Feiner. 

There was in England in O'Connell's time a certain Cath- 
olic lord, the Earl of Shrewsbury, who was also the Premier 
Earl of England, Earl of Waterford in the Irish peerage, and 
Hereditary Lord High Steward of Ireland. He did not own 
even a house in Ireland, but derived his Irish title and honors 
by direct descent from Sir John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury 
and Viceroy of Ireland. This was the self-same Talbot who 
commanded the English forces in their barbarous invasion of 
France, when, as the English historian, Lingard, tells us, "he 
spread desolation and terror to the very walls of Paris," 
"ravaged the country with impunity," and brought upon it 
"a more dreadful scourge in the combined operation of famine 
and pestilence." "A very scourge and a daily terror to the 
French people," is the account of him given by an older Eng- 
lish historian. Hall, "insomuch that women in France, to fear 
their children, would cry, the Talbot cometh." In Ireland he 
earned this reputation, "that there came not from the time of 
Kerod, by whom Christ was crucified, anyone so wicked in evil 
deeds." So, besides being Viceroy, he was made Earl of Water- 
ford and Wexford, and Seneschal and Constable of Ireland, 
and Richard Talbot, his brother, of hardly less ferocity, was 
for many years Archbishop of Dublin, and for a time Viceroy 
of Ireland. 

Lord ShreM'sbury, his descendant, the Catholic English 
peer, had supported the demand of the Irish Catholics for eman- 
cipation ; for it promised relief and benefit to himself and his 
fellow Catholics of the English aristocracy. But when the 
Irish went on to demand the restoration of the National rights 
that had been wrested from them by corruption and atrocities 
only a generation before, the now emancipated Catholic peer 
threw all his weight into the scale of tyranny. This charac- 
teristic piece of conduct furnished the occasion for O'Connell's 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 165 

masterly ^'Letter to the Earl of Shrewsbury," written in 1841, 
a statement of Ireland's position, political, industrial, and 
financial, which should be in the hands of every Irish reader. 
In this document O'Connell speaks, not in the florid or impas- 
sioned words of the orator, but in close-reasoned incisive sent- 
ences, in testimonies drawn mainly from the writings of his 
opponents or of the officials of English government in Ireland. 

The Catholic Unionist aristocrat, fit representative of all 
that tribe, is quickly disposed of. O'Connell sweeps him from 
the footpath into the gutter with a broom in which every twig 
is a quotation from the writings of the Catholic earl before the 
Irish enemy had made him a free Englishman. 

"You now accuse me,'' says O'Connell to this lately emanci- 
pated enemy of liberty, "you now accuse me of stirring up strife 
between the two countries, of calumniating the English, and 
misrepresenting their dispositions towards the Irish. But, 
lohen it suited your own purpose, you emphatically proclaimed 
that 

'ENGLAND'S PROSPERITY WAS IRELAND'S 
OPPRESSION,' 

for that 

THE DAY OF ENGLAND'S PROSPERITY WAS 
'NEVER A DAY OF GRACE OR JUSTICE TO IRELAND.' 

You then yourself proclaimed — even more extensively than I 
did — that 

THE ENGLISH PEOPLE, 'HIGH AND LOW, 

GREAT AND SMALL, WERE EQUALLY HOSTILE 

TO THE POOR SONS OF ERIN.' 

I love," adds O'Connell, "to adopt your words." 

Ah ! yes, "when it suited your purpose." How history 
repeats itself ! We have it here, on the testimony of the Eng- 
lish Unionist Earl of Shrewsbury, that ''England's prosperity 



166 V/HAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

is Ireland's oppression" — a dictum that afforded tlie model for 
O'Connell's own more memorable maxim, ''England's difficulty 
is Ireland's opportunity." We have it from the same unbiassed 
witness, unbiassed at all events on behalf of Ireland, that "the 
day of England's prosperity was never a day of grace or justice 
to Ireland." There are some who would have us believe that all 
this is now changed. Where is the proof of it? Is it in declara- 
tions made, like Lord Shrewsbury's, when they suited the pur- 
pose? Is it in pledges displayed for years before the Irish peo- 
ple, while it suited the purpose, embodied in the most solemn 
form possible, a statute signed by the King of England, while 
it suited the purpose, used in Ireland to extract a blood-tribute 
while it suited the purpose, and thrown to the dogs, when it had 
suited the purpose? We have it on the same unbiassed and un- 
questionable testimony, that "the English people, high and low, 
great and small, are equally hostile to the poor sons of Erin." 
We are asked to believe that all this is also changed. Where 
is the proof of it ? Words, words, words, and, as the Attorney- 
General for England has boasted, "an Act that is not a fact." 
Will the Irish people ever again believe in words that are not 
acts, in acts that are not facts, in facts that are not under their 
own control? 

Here are facts, related in detail in a newspaper now spread 
before me, the "Irish Independent" of June the 8th, 1915. 
About a fortnight before that date, a party of English seamen 
from the naval patrol boat, Drake II, were drinking in a public 
house in Caherciveen, the nearest town to Daniel O'Connell's 
birthplace and home. Some Irishmen were also in the house. 
One of the Englishmen insulted the Irish, calling them "Irish 
bumms." A number of the Englishmen set upon a man named 
John Kinsella, a fisherman of Arklow, knocked him down, and 
kicked him on the ground. Suiting the word to the action one 
of them said that "Irishmen should be always under the feet 
of Englishmen." After t7iis, one of the Englishmen brought an 
information against Kinsella, the man whom they had insulted, 
knocked down and kicked. He charged Kinsella under the 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 167 

Defence of the Realm Act with having said: "England is no 
good. We would be far better under German rule. We don't 
forget that England did years ago worse atrocities than Ger- 
many is doing at present." The magistrates convicted Ean- 
sella unanimously, but they also found that Kinsella had spoken 
under provocation. Under the Defence of the Realm Act, any- 
thing done or said that is likely to produce disafifection, is a 
criminal offence. It is needless to inquire whether the pro- 
vocation, which the magistrates found to have been offered to 
Irishmen in an Irish town by English naval seamen, was a 
crime in this sense — perfectly needless, when all Ireland knows 
well that the conduct of Ministers of the Crown has been likely 
to produce the gravest disaffection in Ireland, and has pro- 
duced it. About the dispositions of Englishmen, "high and low, 
great and small," towards Irishmen, we have Lord Shrews- 
bury's Unionist testimony and the Caherciveen facts, and on 
the other side, words, words, words. More momentous still 
and worthy to be deeply pondered on at this time, is the Eng- 
lish Unionist peer's avowal that "the day of England's pros- 
perity was never a day of grace or justice to Ireland." No one 
ventures to say that these days are the days of England's 
prosperity. They are, we are told, the days of England's 
difficulty, and how is Ireland treated? If not now, when, we 
may ask, can Ireland expect "the day of grace and justice?" 

Now let us return to O'Connell and the English earl whom 
O'Connell had emancipated. 

"You alleged in your anti-Union paragraph," says O'Con- 
nell to the earl, "that Ireland 'consented' to throw herself on 
the mercy of her 

'RELENTLESS MASTER'— 

meaning thereby England. You are mistaken. Ireland never 
consented to the Union, as I shall presently show more in de- 
tail. 

Ireland never did — Ireland does not — Ireland 
never will consent to the Union. She suffers 



168 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

it only until the favourable moment comes 
to dissolve it, and hy dissolving it to render 
the connection with the British Crown per- 
petual.'' 

Thus did Daniel O'Connell preach the doctrine of Sinn 
Fein, and pledge Ireland forever to that doctrine. O'Connell 
was a lawyer, the ablest lawyer of his time. He knew well 
that England's statesmen were on the pounce to seize any word 
of his that could be construed as treason to their rule. Observe 
the skill with which he is able to state that the alternative to 
Irish legislative independence is separation from the British 
Crown. 

O'Connell goes on to state in the clearest terms the Irish 
Declaration of Right: "My conviction," he writes, "is de- 
liberate and fixed upon these points : 

"Firstly — ^That Ireland has a clear indefeasible 
right to a Parliament of her own ; the Union heing in 
constitutional principle a nullity ^ there having been 
no competent authority to annihilate the Constitution 
of Ireland. 

"Secondly — ^That, even if there had been a com- 
petent authority to enact the Union, yet the means 
used for that purpose were so notoriously unjust and 
profligately iniquitous that the Union for this cause 
alone would he a nullity. 

"Thirdly — That, even if the Union were not a 
nullity from the defect of competence or from the ini- 
quitous mode of obtaining it, yet there is no real 
Union at all, nor anything more than an oppressive 
mockery of a Union. 

"Fourthly — That this Union has inflicted injus- 
tice, oppression and misery unparalleled on Ireland; 
and there is not any hope for present redress or future 
security save by a restoration of the Irish Parliament." 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 169 

Alas! in 1841, when O'Connell wrote these words about 
"injustice, oppression and misery unparalleled," he was hap- 
pily ignorant of the fearful blight, moral as well as material, 
that was yet to fall on Ireland under the Union. His Declara- 
tion of Right is a Sinn Fein declaration, and any man who 
adopts it in these days, we are told, is an enemy of the Irish 
Parliamentary Party and of the "Constitutional" movement, 
whose friends are the defunct Liberal Ministry, the British 
Democracy, and the Irish faction of West Britons. The so- 
called Constitutional movement professes to accept what 
O'Connell the extreme Constitutionalist, declared to be con- 
stitutionally null and void. 

And now, in these days, when the sacredness of treaties — 
not including the recent Home Rule treaty — is invoked, and 
Ireland's duty of avenging broken treaties is placarded every- 
where except in Belfast and its neighborhood, let us hear what 
O'Connell has to say about the most solemn and deliberate 
treaty ever made between two nations — a treaty embodied by 
the parliament of each nation in a statute and declared to be 
irrevocable and perpetual — a treaty which nevertheless one of 
the two parties to it began without delay to undermine by the 
vilest means, and which a few years later was torn up, drowned 
in blood, trampled out by atrocities which have had no parallel 
since then in any white man's land. Thus writes O'Connell : 

"Ireland in (1782) insisted that the conditions of her 
future connection should be defined. Her just demands were 
acceded to. Her legislative independence was formally recog- 
nised, or was established 'for ever.' Her judicial independence 
was formally recognised and established for ever. Ireland had 
been thus recognised by England, who declared perpetual her 
exclusive right of making her own laws, of interpreting her own 
laws, of administering her own laws; she had the exclusive 
dominion over her own taxation, debt, and revenue. In short, 
the result was a recognition in practical effect of all these rights 
which she was entitled to, and which she had, notwithstanding 



170 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

some interruptions and English usurpations, enjoyed for cen- 
turies. 

^'There never was a more deliberate and solemn national 
compact. It was declared on all sides to be 'a, final adjustment.' 
That was the appropriate description of this compact, given to 
it in the King's speech to the English Parliament — in the Lord 
Lieutenant's speech to the Irish Parliament — in the responding 
Address of the British Lords, and also of the British Commons 
— in the responding Address of the Irish Lords, and also of the 
Irish Commons. 

"But the greatest validity of this compact was its being 
formed on the clearest inherent right and on the most un- 
questionable constitutional principle. . . . Such was the 'final 
adjustment' of 1782. Ireland, with her proverbial fidelity, per- 
formed her part. England, with her proverbial treachery, 
violated the 'final adjustment', as soon as she found, or rather 
made, an opportunity for its violation. 

"That violation has not and cannot have taken away the 
right. Fraud or force, or hoth together, can never take away 
the right of any property ; still less can they destroy the unal- 
terable indefeasible right to self-government. Such is the 
actual right of Ireland to self-government; suspended in its 
operation for the present, hut existing in truth, reason, justice, 
and constitutional principle, as fully and as powerfully as if 
no invasion had been made in its practical working." 

O'Connell goes on to show that the abolition of the Irish 
Parliament by fraud or force leaves the Irish Constitution un- 
changed. In Cromwell's time, he says, the English monarchy 
was abolished. Then the English House of Lords was abolished. 
And finally the English House of Commons was abolished and 
was superseded by the "instrument of government." But all 
these institutions continued nevertheless to exist, and upon the 
fall of the Cromwellian regime they all came again into opera- 
tion without any act of repeal or law of restoration. In like 
manner, he says, "the Irish Constitution still lives." 

O'Connell calls other eminent witnesses who, like himself, 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 171 

were rigidly constitutional in practice, and yet, like himself, 
were Sinn Feiners in principle. Chief among these were the 
celebrated Plunket, an Irish Whig in politics, afterwards 
Master of the Rolls in England and Lord Chancellor of Ire- 
land ; and Saurin, an Irish Orange Tory, who became Attorney 
General for (or rather against) Ireland. Plunket's eminence 
as a lawyer, recognised in England as well as in Ireland, gives 
special weight to his deliberate pronouncement. Speaking 
against the Union, Plunket said: "I, in the most express terms, 
deny the competence of Parliament to do this Act. I warn you, 
do not dare to lay your hands upon the Constitution. I tell 
you that if, circumstanced as you are, you pass this Act, it will 
he a nullity, and no man in Ireland will he hound to ohey it. 
You have not been elected for this purpose. You have been 
appointed to make laws, not legislatures. You have been 
appointed to act under the Constitution, not to destroy it. You 
are appointed to exercise the functions of legislators, not to 
transfer them; and if you do so, your Act is a dissolution to 
the Government ; and no man in the land is hound to ohey you.'' 

Plunket again says : 

"Yourselves you may extinguish, but the Parliament you 
cannot extinguish. It is enthroned in the hearts of the people 
— it is established in the sanctuary of the Constitution — it is 
immortal as the island it protects ! As well might the frantic 
maniac hope that the act which destroys his miserable body 
should extinguish his eternal soul. Do not dare to lay your 
hands upon the Constitution — it is above your power !" 

"You may make the Union," said Saurin, "binding as a 
law, but you cannot make it obligatory in conscience. It will 
be obeyed as long as England is strong, but resistance to it will 
he in the ahstract a duty, and the exhihition of that resistance 
will he a tnere question of prudence." 

O'Connell goes on to show how, even if the Act of Union 
could have been validly enacted, it was nullified by the use of 
violence and fraud. He turns against Lord Shrewsbury that 
nobleman's own words : "Ireland was goaded into rebellion by 



172 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

the wily policy of a wicked and ambitious minister (Pitt) ; 
then terrified by the atrocities committed in her subjugation/' 

He quotes Plunket on the conduct of Castlereagh, "I accuse 
him," said Plunket, "of fomenting the embers of a lingering re- 
bellion; of hallooing the Protestant against the Catholic, and 
the Catholic against the Protestant; of artfully keeping alive 
domestic dissensions for the purposes of subjugation/' Sub- 
jugation! So that the Union in the view of this moderate 
politician and eminent lawyer, as in the view of the English 
Unionist peer, was not a law but a conquest. 

O'Connell adds his own testimony to what took place with- 
in his own adult memory, and to his own personal knowledge : 
"During the entire time in which the Union was discussed, mar- 
tial law was proclaimed ; the Habeas Corpus Act was suspend- 
ed; there was in Ireland no species of legal protection for 
property, liberty or life; the persons of the King's Irish sub- 
jects were at the caprice of the King's Ministers. The gaols 
were crammed with victims, unaccused by any species of legal 
evidence; and the scaffolds were actually reeking with the 
blood of wretches untried by any legal tribunal. All the time 
the Union was under discussion, courts martial had unlimited 
power over life and limb. Bound by no definite form of charge, 
and by no fixed rule of evidence, the courts martial threatened 
with death those who dared to resist the spoliation of their 
birthright, and awarded execution against whom they pleased. 
^During that time, the use of torture ivas familiar. Men against 
whom there was no evidence of guilt were flogged, very many 
nearly to death, to extort confessions. Some were actually 
flogged to death, and died under the excruciating torment. 
There were upwards of 175,000 British bayonets in Ireland. 
The officers had recognised power of life and death. The 
'Ancient Britons' and other private soldiers took that power." 

He then shows how public meetings, even when called by 
magistrates and higher authorities, to protest against the 
Union, were suppressed by military force. These things are 
worth remembering, in view of the sickening hypocritical cant 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 173 

about "militarism" that has been echoed recently by men call- 
ing themselves Irish and Nationalist. The High Sheriff of 
Tipperary convened a meeting of the nobility, gentry and free- 
holders of the county at Clonmel to petition against the Union. 
The English Government took a short way to Tipperary. 

"A division of the army marched into the courthouse, drove 
the sheriff from the chair, and dispersed the meeting." The 
High Sheriff of Queen's County called a similar meeting at 
Maryborough, "It was dispersed by Colonel Connor of the 
North Cork militia, at the head of a party of horse, foot and 
artillery." Again Plunket's words, spoken at the time, are 
quoted : "I will be bold to say that licentious and impious 
France, in all the unrestrained excesses that anarchy and 
atheism have given birth to, has not committed a more insid- 
ious act against her enemy than is now attempted by the pro- 
fessed champion of civilised Europe against Ireland, a friend 
and ally in her hour of calamity and distress." These words 
will bear comparison with things said in our own time. 

O'Connell then deals with the bribery used to purchase 
votes, calculating the total money paid in bribes as no less 
than £2,775,000. Withal, the Government could not induce 
5,000 persons to sign petitions for the Union, and all its in- 
timidations could not prevent hostile petitions signed by 
707,000 persons. O'Connell next shows that the Union, besides 
being unconstitutional and void by fraud and violence, was at 
all times a sham Union. It is needless to repeat his proofs for 
the hollow mockery of the so-called Union is known till our own 
day, and better than ever in our day, to everybody in Ireland. 
Things are done daily in Ireland by the arbitrary power of the 
Government that are not attempted and dare not be attempted 
in England. The Union, in Plunket's word, is a subjugation. 
O'Connell again retorts Lord Shrewsbury's words on Lord 
Shrewsbury : the Union made Ireland "the slave of her relent- 
less master, and not (even) a handmaid; the servile dependent 
instead of an honorable partner. . . . The Union was abortive 
of good and prolific of evil, being only a union of words, not of 



174 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

hearts; of force, not of affection." Many details are added to 
show the oppressive treatment of Ireland by the Predominant 
Partner, "her relentless master." 

O'Connell then expands his fourth article, the failure and 
injustice of the Union. He writes : 

"In 1782, Ireland forced the English Government to recog- 
nise her independence. In 1782, Ireland attained self-govern- 
ment." (Yes, and in 1914, Ireland's representatives wheedled, 
fawned, begged, bargained and truckled for a provincial legis- 
lature, and in 1914 Ireland attained — ) "What ensued?" asks 
O'Connell. "Peace and prosperity; the most rapid, the most 
extraordinary strides in improvement of every kind. Prosper- 
ity in every department and in every branch, commerce fostered 
and increased; agriculture encouraged and enriched; manu- 
factures promoted and extended; party spirit checked and 
decaying; every class daily increasing in wealth and in com- 
fort; the laborer becoming a farmer; the farmer rising into 
the rank of gentleman; the gentleman f ailing (!) into the 
rank of baronet; the baronet elevated to the peerage; commer- 
cial men acquiring estates ; towns growing into cities ; popula- 
tion accumulating; and cheerful merriment, so congenial to 
the Irish disposition, gladdening the land at every side. No 
country on the face of the earth ever made so rapid a progress 
in improvement of every kind as Ireland did in the fourteen 
years of her legislative independence." 

This last statement may indeed challenge the test of uni- 
versal history. Ireland throve in those years without being 
niggardly. Public money was lavishly spent, yet the public 
debt was trivial in amount. All classes spent freely according 
to their means, yet all increased in prosperity. And we are 
askecl to believe that the Home Rule promised, but not per- 
formed, by the Asquith Ministry, is, or would be if it were a 
reality, superior to "Grattan's Parliament." What do they 
mean who make so strange an assertion ? Will they venture to 
undertake that Asquith's Home Rule, if it were not shamelessly 
abandoned, would be able to accomplish as much for Ireland 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 175 

in sixteen years as was done by the soverign Irish. Legislature 
won in 1782 by the Irish Volunteers? If they promise it, how 
many will believe them? O'Connell never countenanced the 
idea of such a legislature as was promised in the late Home 
Rule Bill, now awaiting ''amendment." Though its Irish advo- 
cates call themselves Constitutionalists, we have seen, that, to 
O'Connell's mind, anything short of the restoration of Grat- 
tan's Parliament was unconstitutional. 

It was not the Irish Parliament that was defective. The 
franchise was limited and irregular, but so was the English 
franchise at that time and until 1832, when it was extended 
somewhat and made less eccentric. O'Connell himself says, 
and he knew best, that Catholic Emancipation was delayed a 
quarter of a century by the so-called Act of Union. This means 
that, had it not been for the Union, the Irish Parliament, 
manned by the Irish Protestant Ascendancy, supposed to have 
been exceptionally intolerant, would have emancipated the 
Catholics of Ireland twenty-five years sooner than their eman- 
cipation was extorted, by fear of consequences, from the Brit- 
ish Government. The man who led the Catholics to that vic- 
tory was O'Connell, and he does not conceal his pride in the 
achievement. All the more remarkable is his avowal 
that, only for the "Union" that glory would never have 
been his, he would not have been the Liberator. It is equally 
certain that the reform of the Irish franchise was delayed 
even more than a quarter of a century by the "Union." This re- 
form was in fact the most pressing public question in Irish 
politics at the time when Pitt and Castlereagh began their 
wicked and bloody intrigue for the "subjugation" of Ireland. 

The weak point in the Irish Constitution was this, that the 
Executive was not dependent on a Parliamentary majority. 
But like freedom for Catholics and the reformed franchise, the 
Dependence of the Ministry on a parliamentar}- majority was 
not then a recognised part of the British any more than of the 
Irish Constitution. Pitt himself formed a Cabinet and gov- 
erned England as Prime Minister during the lifetime of a 



176 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

Parliament in which his supporters were a small minority. 
We may be certain that the Irish Parliament, had it not been 
destroyed, would have speedily effected this reform likewise. 
It is mere playing with words to pretend that a parliament 
such as the unamended Home Rule Bill held out was superior 
to Grattan's Parliament. O'Connell knew well the defects of 
the suspended Irish Constitution, yet he also declared that he 
would gladly go back under Protestant Ascendancy rather 
than submit to the ''Union." 

Once more hear O'Connell on the achievements of the 
Irish Parliament : 

*'I am not speaking of imaginary things, I am not indulging 
the visions of fancy, I assert only that which every human he- 
mg knows to be literally true and which no man cari have the 
hardihood to deny, namely, that the uprise of Ireland in all the 
arts and comforts and blessings of commerce, agriculture, and 
civilisation, for the fourteen years ensuing her legislative in- 
dependence, and produced by that measure, has never been 
equalled in any other country, and in any age or period of 
time." His testimony is indisputable and does not stand alone. 

"The bankers of the City of Dublin met on the 18th of 
December, 1798, and entered into these resolutions against the 
then threatened Union: 

'' 'Resolved — ^That since the renunciation of the power of 
Great Britain, in the year 1782, to legislate for Ireland, the 
commerce and prosperity of this kingdom have eminently in- 
creased.' 

" 'Resolved — That we attribute these blessings, under 
Providence, to the wisdom of the Irish Parliament.' 

"The Guild of Merchants (Chamber of Commerce) of Dub- 
lin met on the 14th of January, 1799, and entered into the fol- 
lowing resolution : 

" 'Resolved — That the commerce of Ireland has increased, 
and her manufactures improved beyond example since the in- 
dependence of the Kingdom was restored by the exertions of 
our countrymen in 1782.' " 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 177 

These resolutions were adopted immediately after the 
bloody suppression of the Insurrection of '98. 

"A thousand more such documents," says O'Connell, 
''might be easily procured. There is another fact equally un- 
questionable : that the Union has not conferred any one benefit 
upon Ireland. In the words of Lord Shrewsbury, ^it has been 
abortive of good and prolific of evil.' It gave up our national 
independence. It, handed over our inherent right of self-gov- 
ernment. It stultified ourselves, and proclaimed our incapa- 
city. It degraded and provincialised our country. It gave her 
up to the stranger and the unfriendly. It was treason against 
our native land. What value — what consideration have we re- 
ceived in return? None — none — none! 'The wages of sin is 
death.' Such are the wages of the Union. The sin was the 
crime of others — ours was the punishment. This one truth, I 
repeat, is indisputable — that the Union has not conferred upon 
Ireland any one advantage." 

Since O'Connell wrote these words, nobody has ventured 
to show that they are other than the simple and naked truth. 

If Daniel O'Connell were now alive to teach these doc- 
trines upon which, he declares, "his conviction is deliberate and 
fixed," he would be told by the Prophets of the "Constitutional 
Movement" that he was a nobody, a crank, and a mischief- 
maker. They would tell him that he was one of "their worst 
enemies," and they might go some way in persuading him that 
they had much in common with those in whom he recogn^ed 
the worst enemies of Ireland. When he would adopt Lord 
Shrewsbury's words and speak of England as our "relentless 
master," when he would say with the English Catholic Unionist 
aristocrat that "England's prosperity is Ireland's oppression" 
and that "the day of England's prosperity was never a day of 
grace or justice to Ireland," when he would quote Plunket to 
show that the Union is null and void, and that "no man in Ire- 
land is bound to obey it" ; when he would quote the Orangeman 
Saurin's advice, that resistance to the Union is a moral duty, 
a duty to be exercised upon any well-founded opportunity; 



178 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

then assuredly these wiser and more patriotic guides and their 
expectant followers would yell ^'Down with the Sinn Feiner!" 
As he was able to confound the intolerant arrogance of the 
Catholic anti-Irish nobleman whom he had made a free English- 
man, would to God we had among us to-day a leader who, in- 
stead of remonstrating through Mr. Augustine Birrell about 
Lord Chancellorships, would have the honor, the dignity, the 
national self-respect to tell that sympathetic, Nonconformist- 
conscience-laden, temporary English office holder in Ireland, 
that any lecture from him to Irishmen on what constitutes 
Irish loyalty in Ireland, is an impertinence and can be nothing 
but an impertinence; that Irishmen alone have the right to de- 
termine and decide what is and what is not Irish loyalty. 

O'Connell points out that Pitt's policy, put into action by 
Castlereagh, of ''hallooing Protestant against Catholic and 
Catholic against Protestant," to bring about the Union, was 
continued afterwards by the leading statesmen of England to 
preserve the Union. 

The Duke of Wellington, says O'Connell, ''thrust into the 
Irish Parliamentary Reform Bill the clause which preserved 
the rights of the exclusively Protestant freemen. And the ex- 
press grounds on which he perpetrated these enormities was to 
preserve, as far as he could, the ascendancy of the Protestant 
Church in Ireland. He more than once, during Lord Mel- 
bourne's government, laid it down as a maxium in the adminis- 
tration of Ireland 'that the Protestants should be encouraged.' 
By 'encourage' of course he intended, and avowed he intended, 
that they should be preferred to the Catholics on all practi- 
cable occasions." 

Of Sir Robert Peel, O'Connell writes : "He began his car- 
eer in Ireland by organising Orangeism ; by joining with Saurin 
in that corruption of the Irish Bar which now promises us a 
plentiful crop of bigoted, intolerant, and partial judges." The 
promise has been well fulfilled. "He reorganised and armed the 
Orange yeomanrj'^ of the North of Ireland.". How history re- 
peats itself ! "Whilst he proclaimed in the House of Commons, 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 179 

that the only fault of these Orangemen was their 'excess of 
loyalty.' " How history repeats itself ! In our own time, a 
British Cabinet Minister has said that the Orangemen were 
''urged on to riot" — not by the British art of government in 
Ireland but — "by loyalty and religion." Only within the last 
few weeks, since the formation of the Coalition Cabinet, the 
Chief Secretary against Ireland, Mr. Birrell, has publicly and 
in Parliament certified the "loyalty" of an armed force formed 
to offer violent resistance to what was, when Mr. Birrell so 
spoke, an Act of Parliament on the Statute Book, and declared 
his approval of Civil Servants of the State becoming or re- 
maining members of that force. The late Liberal Government 
provided a large part of that force with arms, outfit, camps 
and training at the public expense, and kept them in Ireland 
while many thousands of Irishmen, with far less training, 
were hurried out to face the dangers of Flanders and the Dar- 
danelles. A recent test case has proved that this "loyal" force, 
maintained in Ireland by the British Government at the pub- 
lic expense, is allowed by that Government to exclude from its 
ranks any man who is a Catholic in religion or a Nationalist 
in politics. Thus, from Castlereagh to Birrell, the continuity 
of British rule in Ireland is completed up-to-date. 

In the new Coalition Ministry, Mr. Birrell has for col- 
leagues men who have publicly told one section of Irishmen 
how to "loathe and despise" the majority of their fellow-coun- 
trymen, and who have been admitted to the Cabinet without 
one word of disclaimer of this barbarous teaching. 

Several members of the present Coalition Cabinet can be 
shown to have been long privy to the Ulster Pogrom Plot, of 
which, in spite of earnest counsels of secrecy, the accumulated 
evidence is now beyond their control. It is but just to say that 
this plot is still unknown to the rank and file of the Ulster 
Unionists. 

Let no man believe that British Statesmanship has fav- 
ored Protestants in Ireland for the sake of Protestantism, 
any more than it has favored the "balance of power" on the 



180 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

Continent for the sake of any part of the Continent. Its 
object has been to weaken Ireland by keeping her 
divided. Before the Union, Pitt humbugged the Irish Cath- 
olic Bishops with friendship, and was thus able as O'Connell 
testifies to delay Catholic Emancipation for a quarter of a 
century. Lord Randolph Churchill laid down in private the 
doctrine that "Ireland must be ruled through the Roman Cath- 
olic clergy," and devised our present system of Intermediate 
Education so that schools and colleges under exclusively reli- 
gious management might receive State endowment, in the 
hope that those who were so endowed might be moulded into a 
sort of extension of the British Civil Service. The Intermediate 
Programme, it will be noted, has from the outset been modelled 
on the requirements — not of Ireland — but of the Civil Service 
Year-Book. This game is by no means played out. Within the 
past year, underhand approaches have been made to more than 
one Catholic Bishop to the end that the Irish Volunteers might 
be discountenanced, and the clever suggestion has been artfully 
insinuated that the Irish Volunteers have a secret revolution- 
ary tendency. This, of course, is an Imperial falsehood. The 
entire programme and policy of the Irish Volunteers is what 
it always was, public and explicit; and secrecy has been con- 
fined to such action, as though entirely lawful and permissible 
in any free country, has been unlawfully and arbitrarily inter- 
fered with by the "Prussian methods" of Dublin Castle. Any 
lie, however, that will serve the purpose will be made to serve 
the purpose of our Imperial masters. 

"Repeal," writes O'Connell, "is a National cause. It in- 
volves a question between legislative independence and entire 
servitude." But, as I have already shown, O'Connell did not 
regard entire servitude as the real alternative to Repeal. He 
naturally refused to contemplate submission to National servi- 
tude under any circumstances. His real alternative to Repeal 
was Separation. This was not a passing thought in O'Connell's 
mind when he wrote his Letter to Lord Shrewsbury in 1841. He 
hinted it clearly enough in dealing with a noted pronouncement 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 181 

of Lord Lyndhurst, a Minister of the Crown, who declared the 
Irish to be "aliens in language, aliens in blood, and aliens in 
religion." To this declaration, Richard Lalor Sheil replied 
in a speech in which the heights of oratorical power were con- 
trasted with the depths of servile weakness. O'Connell dis- 
posed of Lyndhurst in a sentence, which, though guarded, was 
neither servdle nor rhetorical. Lord Lyndhurst, he said sig- 
nificantly, "has been guilty of most mischievous discretion — 
let me call it dangerous too !" Much plainer, and sufficient to 
prove that O'Connell's alternative was present to his mind 
long before 1841, is the language of his Letter to the People 
of Ireland, dated 4th April, 1833 : 

"I cannot describe with anything like accuracy the extent 
of the innate hatred of Ireland which I have witnessed in many 
men since my last return to this country (England). They 
hate us, and without avowing it, even to themselves, they fear 
us. 

"Nay, more, I am thoroughly persuaded that the only way 
to prevent the final separation of the ttvo countries is, to attach 
Ireland to the connection by giving her the protection from 
insult and injury of a Parliament of her own. . . . 

'The inevitable conclusion is arrived at. Before the Repeal 
of the Union no good can be done for Ireland. Until the Re- 
peal of the Union, Ireland can reap but little benefit from 
British connection. I repeat that those who oppose the Repeal 
are blindly, ignorantly, but not the less powerfully or certainly, 
driving towards separation. 

"To us, who are not at present separatists, and never will 
be so if we can help it — to us who honestly seek the restoration 
of Irish freedom and the establishment of Irish prosperity, 
but one duty — one great all-absorbing duty remains — it is, 
peaceably and legally to effectuate the restoration of an Irish 
Parliament." 

Such were the political ideas which were natural to 
O'Connell, the great Constitutionalist, which he knew to be 
natural to the people of Ireland, and which he desired to keep 



182 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

before the minds of the people of Ireland. They are the ideas 
at which every expectant job-hunter and job-monger in Ireland 
now feels himself entitled to cast in public the opprobrious 
title of Sinn Feinism. 



(The Second Part of this Paper will show what were O'Connell's 
Sinn Fein doctrines on the subject of Irish industrial prosperity and of 
the financial slavery imposed on Ireland by the British Empire. To 
realise what Ireland, unaided, but free, can do for herself, and must do 
for herself, read this continuation.) 



DANIEL O'CONNELL AND SINN FEIN 

Part II. 
HOW IRELAND IS PLUNDERED. 

IN the first part of this paper, it has been shown that Daniel 
O'Counell, with all the extreme Constitutionalism that 
proved fatal to him, was nevertheless what is now called 
a Sinn Feiner, and that in his own mind, if the principles of 
Sinn Fein should be found of no avail, the only right alterna- 
tive was to be a Separatist. From his Constitutional impeach- 
ment of the Union, let us now pass on to his economic impeach- 
ment. Already we have seen his statement, for which he 
challenges denial or disproof, that "the Union has not con- 
ferred any one benefit upon Ireland." He has stated briefly 
and clearly the moral and political and social evils that he 
found around him after only forty yeiirs of Union government. 
On the economic results of only forty years of the Union, the 
most active forty years of his public life, he brings forward 
no less striking testimony. 

Before going further, let me say that this paper is not 
intended to be a contribution to Irish history. Its purpose is 
not to justify O'Connell, nor to convict the Imperial govern- 
ment of oppressive, extortionate, treacherous and atrocious con- 
duct towards Ireland in the past. The Irish reader will have 
read in vain if he has not seen in these pages a lesson to govern 
present conduct and a warning for the future. 

O'Connell sums up his case in this : "He who entrusts his 
business to others is sure to have it neglected." Passing over 
the deep-set English prejudice against the Irish Nation, al- 
ready touched on by him, he says : "Each nation has a sacred 
duty imposed on it, to attend to its own affairs; that duty is 



184 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

also a sacred right, which in our case has been most treacher- 
ously as well as basely violated. This, as I have said, is mani- 
festly an evil inherent in the Union, and for which there can, 
of course, be no remedy hut the repeal of the measure.'^ 

There are people, especially those who prefer the artificial 
and variable orthodoxies of a party to any honest effort on 
their own part to think out the great problem of Irish national 
regeneration, who will say, why go so far as to demand repeal 
of the Union when we find all English parties opposed to the 
repeal, and when we may possibly get some minor form of 
domestic government that may enable us to undo the evils of 
the Union. It matters little whether we name our demand 
Kepeal or Home Rule. What does matter is the reality. The 
one great bane of Ireland's existence since Strongbow's land- 
ing has been interference from England in Ireland's domestic 
and national affairs. The latest historian of what is called the 
"Norman Conquest" of Ireland, Mr. Orpen, whose bias is al- 
together anti-national, insists strongly on the evil effects of 
interference from England with the policy and activity of the 
"Norman" invaders. In every subsequent age, it is plain to 
the degree of commonplace that interference from England has 
been the constant and fertile cause of unsettlement, disorgani- 
sation and general unsoundness in the state of Ireland. The 
solemn treaty of 1782 failed in its effect because the victorious 
patriots of that time' failed to rise to the necessity of excluding 
English political interference at all costs. Recognising, as 
they did, the supreme importance of safeguarding the rights 
and liberties they had won, it was their duty to secure, by the 
clearest and most stringent enactments, that any attempt on 
the part of any man whose person or property stood within 
the jurisdiction of the Irish Parliament to induce, favor or 
entertain proposals from any outside quarter to undo the free 
Irish Constitution would bring the person and property of the 
delinquent into the gravest peril. On the first discovery, for 
example, of Castlereagh's intrigues with Pitt or of his intrigues 
with persons in Ireland, the Irish Parliament should have been 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 185 

in a position to put Castlereagh under arrest, to bring him to 
trial for conspiracy against the Constitution, and to punish 
him by attainder, imprisonment, or even the penalty which he 
afterwards awarded to himself. The fatal weakness of Grat- 
tan's Irish Constitution was that it openly tolerated from the 
beginning the exercise of interference from England. To this 
cause alone, interference from England, is due the sustained 
attempt to divide the people of Ireland by a line at once poli- 
tical and sectarian — a division that appeared impossible before 
the Union. The same cause has been unceasingly active down to 
our time, when the menace of civil war in Ireland has been in- 
spired, fomented and financed by interfering English politi- 
cians. The one great political necessity of Ireland is to get rid 
of interference from England. Any measure that secures the 
freedom of Ireland from English interference, by what name 
soever that measure may be called, whatsoever may be its 
draftsmanship and its details, will solve the Irish political 
problem; and any measure, even Repeal of the Union, that 
leaves interference from England a thing practicable with 
impunity, will leave the problem still unsolved. That is the 
test. If English politicians claim the right to interfere or re- 
serve the power to interfere, then we know where we stand 
and what we have to expect. We know from history and ex- 
perience that, in that case, the state of Ireland can never be 
settled or safe or wholesome. The ancient wound will remain 
unhealed, the ancient hostility unappeased. 

O'Connell proceeds to expose ''the second great evil of the 
Union, the financial robbery of Ireland." As many have dealt 
with this subject during recent years, it is unnecessary to quote 
O'Connell in full. Enough to say that he had a sound general 
grasp of that part of the question. He shows, however, that in 
making Ireland share in the burden of the British public debt, 
the British Government openly violated a solemn pledge given 
to Ireland on that Government's behalf. The pledge was pub- 
licly declared by Castlereagh himself, on the 5th of February, 
1800. "His pledge was in these words; in respect of the past 



186 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

expenses, Ireland is to have 'no concern whatsoever with the 
debt of Great Britain.' Again, he said, 'Great Britain now 
paid taxes for interest on her debt, ten millions.' (Observe 
here, that he should have said she paid in interest 16,821,000 
pounds. His inaccuracy, however, was not material, because he 
added) 'for any portion of this, she (Britain) could not call 
upon Ireland.' " Great Britain, however, did not keep her 
promise. She fulfilled to the letter Samuel Johnson's candid 
prophecy and warning : "Do not unite with us ; we shall never 
unite with you, unless to rob you." 

It was not alone with the old National Debt of England be- 
fore the Union, bearing an interest burden of 16,821,000 pounds 
that Ireland was saddled. She was compelled also to shoulder 
the enormous increase of National Debt incurred in the war 
with France, a war to which Irish National sentiment was op- 
posed, especially in the more Protestant North-east; and the 
debt incurred in the Naval War of 1812 with the United States 
of America, a war equally unpopular throughout Ireland. Both 
wars caused Ireland great loss and brought her no compensat- 
ing gain whatsoever. In addition to her loss, she was com- 
pelled to pay an immense increase in taxes. The increase was 
permanent. The facts deserve the gravest attention, in view 
of the War Debt which Great Britain is at present incurring 
and which is mounting up at a rate that makes the incre>ase of 
"National Debt" during the Napoleonic war seem trifling. 

The financial robbery of Ireland by taxation, about which 
so much has been written and so little done to efi'ect a remedy, 
has been enormous, amounting, in the words of Lord Mac- 
donnell, to "an Empire's ransom." Yet it is only a minor frac- 
tion of the whole sum by which wealthy England has enriched 
herself at the expense of a people whose poverty has been the 
subject of English jibes. The chief items of robbery are, the 
suppression of Irish trade and commerce, and the payment of 
Irish rents to absentees in England. Already at the time of 
the Union, the preference of some Irish landowners for Eng- 
lish society and English surroundings cost Ireland about 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 187 

1,500,000 pounds a year. Under the Union, the drain of rents 
from Ireland to England is estimated by O'Connell at more 
than 6,000,000 pounds a year, and this part of the robbery in- 
creased very much after O'Connell's time. There can be little 
doubt that in rent for Irish land, England has extracted from 
Ireland since the Union not less than the appalling sum of 
1,000,000,000 pounds (a thousand million pounds sterling). 
Irishmen are asked to believe that the redemption of Irish 
rents by means of Imperial loans is a typical exercise of Eng- 
lish generosity. Perhaps it is, for it has cost England nothing. 
Ireland has not yet received an appreciable fraction, in this 
way, of the amount robbed from her in taxation ; and what she 
has received, she has received on paper. Not one per cent of 
the purchase money "advanced to Ireland" ever reaches Ire- 
land in any form. It is paid over to bought-out landlords, to 
be immediately re-invested in British investments, or otherwise 
spent for the benefit of British interests. And for this sort of 
"advance," Irish farmers are laid under tribute to Great 
Britain for two generations ! Let us, therefore, not be quick to 
question that the finance of Irish land purchase truly exempli- 
fies England's generosity. 

If the wealth robbed from Ireland in taxation amounts to 
"an Empire's ransom," if the wealth taken by England from 
Ireland in the form of rents and purchase instalments paid by 
Irish people, living in Ireland, for the land of Ireland, reaches 
a figure so colossal that it seems almost impossible in the fin- 
ance of a small and impoverished country ; where are we to find 
words, how are we to induce the mind to grasp the sum total 
of the loss inflicted by the Union on Ireland in the form of de- 
population and economic, industrial and commercial, decay 
and ruin ? There can be no doubt that this loss has far exceed- 
ed the enormous combined total of overtaxation and land tri- 
bute, and must be reckoned, if a reckoning is possible, in 
thousands of millions sterling. It is an absolute loss, a pure 
economic ruin, on a scale never accomplished by the blighting 
hordes of Huns and Vandals, The most frightful wars in his- 



188 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

tory have not brought upon any equal area of inhabited land 
a sum of economic evils as great as a century of Imperial peace 
has inflicted on this small country, Britain's nearest neighbour. 

The loss has been absolute. Neither England nor any other 
country has gained by it. On the contrary, England most of all 
countries except the unfortunate victim, Ireland, has been a 
heavy loser by the ruin of Ireland. This fact will at once be 
recognised by anyone possessing the least knowledge of econo- 
mic matters, indeed by anyone exercising ordinary common- 
sense upon the subject. No country becomes less wealthy hy 
the fact of having a wealthy country for its neighbour. It may 
lose through the hostility of a neighbour country, rich or poor, 
it cannot lose through the neighbour's prosperity. Nobody pre- 
tends that England's prosperity is of itself a cause of Ireland's 
poverty. Indeed we are often reminded that it is advantageous 
to Ireland to have so prosperous and populous a neighbor 
for a customer. The converse holds good. A prosperous and 
populous Ireland could not fail to be a cause of increased pros- 
perity to England. - 

Why, then, it may be asked, has England consented to the 
ruin of Ireland, and why has English statesmanship contributed 
actively to Ireland's ruin? 

With regard to England in general, the people of England, 
the question is answered by saying that nearly every large 
population and most men and women, even of the better edu- 
cated, are savages in regard of economic knowledge, and prefer 
plunder to thrift. At this moment the English people can be 
induced to welcome proposals for the commercial ruin of other 
peoples whose progress and prosperity contribute largely to 
the progress and prosperity of the English people. It is exactly 
as though the people of one street in a city were prepared to 
sack, loot and destroy the shops and factories of a neighboring 
street. If what wjb are accustomed to hear about savages is 
true, this sort of thing might be a matter of course in some sav- 
age community. The English people at large, and the ruling 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 18& 

classes, perhaps even more than the multitude, are still evi- 
dently in this condition of economic savagery, 

A second factor in the case has been the strong and deep 
anti-Irish sentiment prevalent in England. O'Connell has 
quoted Lord Shrewsbury's striking testimony to the extent of 
this sentiment, and has adopted the testimony as corroborated 
by his own knowledge and experience. Shrewsbury was an 
English Catholic Unionist, opposed to O'Connell on the Kepeal 
demand, but his candid avowals of the English disposition 
towards Ireland had been elicited a few years earlier on the 
question of Catholic Emancipation, When his personal in- 
terests were involved, as O'Connell reminded him, Lord Shrews- 
bury allowed the truth to come out. When it became a national 
question, the English Catholic Earl of Shrewsbury relapsed 
into his wigwam of ignorance and prejudice, and thus exhibited 
the self-same truth in a different manner. England, accord- 
ing to Lord Shrewsbury in 1828, is Ireland's "relentless mas- 
ter." "The day of England's prosperity has never yet been a 
day of grace or justice to Ireland." "The spirit which actuates 
this feeling of hostility amongst the peasantry of England to 
the poor, wandering and expatriated sons of Erin is the same 
which has ever governed the higher classes in their treatment 
of that unhappy country." Lord Shrewsbury is a competent 
witness on this point. In England, he writes, "high and low, 
great and small, are equally hostile to the poor sons of Erin.'* 
The primitive tribal state of the English mind in regard of 
other peoples, but especially of the Irish, explains clearly 
enough why England, to her own economic loss, has shown full 
complacency in the ruin of Ireland. 

But what of English statesmen, the rulers of England? 
Surely they were and are able to rise above the tribe and discern 
the true advantage of their own country. The fact is that they 
have not done so. What are the reasons? Lord Shrewsbury 
supplies one. The same tribal hatred that made the English 
peasantry hate the Irish "has ever governed the higher classes 



19 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

in their treatment of that unhappy country." There is a 
second reason. Since the triumph of Pitt, as to a limited extent 
before it, the sentiment now called Imperialism has ever more 
and more taken the place of patriotism in England. This pro- 
cess was brought to its highest pitch by Joseph Chamberlain, 
whose adopted mission in his later days was to teach his 
countrymen "to think Imperially," and who scoffed at the 
"Little Englanders" that contented themselves with English 
patriotism. Chamberlain succeeded in forcing this view upon 
the Liberals whom he had deserted — not on their leaders, al- 
ways in effect a wing of Toryism — but on the Radical rank and 
file. World-power, not national well-being, is the Imperialist 
aim. The Imperialist cannot help being anti-Irish. He can 
never forgive the wrongs that his predecessors have inflicted 
on Ireland, much less can he forgive that Irish tenacity and 
"perversity" which, in spite of the often apparently complete 
success of Imperial force and fraud, refuses to accept what he 
calls "the accomplished fact" — the subjugation of Ireland. 

Imperialism seeks prosperity not through industry and 
economic progress, but through power, especially through sea- 
power, through the subjugation and exploitation of weak 
countries, and through the destruction of competitors. What 
we call piracy in the case of the Algerians, or brigandage in the 
case of Sicilian mountaineers can also be carried on with all 
the pomp and circumstance of high statecraft, and can com- 
mand the services of science and learning and diplomacy and 
the support of churchmen and courts of law and chambers of 
commerce and the newspapers — in that case we call it Imper- 
ialism. It is the chief cause of the ruin of Ireland. In our own 
time we have witnessed the unhappy and criminal attempt to 
save the position of a party by associating Imperialism with 
the hitherto unsullied ideal of Irish Nationalism. Is mairg 
ahhigo hole is go hocht na dhiaidJi. Woe to the man, or the 
land, that doth evil and gaineth nothing. What shall it profit 
a nation that it gain the whole world and lose its own soul? 
But what, unless the devil's laughter, will be the reward of a 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 191 

nation that loses its own soul, and gains not even the shadow 
of a gain ? 

The glorified piracy and barbarity that is called Imperial- 
ism explains clearly enough why England, to her own econ- 
omic damage, has been a willing agent in the economic ruin of 
Ireland. 

The extent of that economic ruin baffles estimate. 

Its principal heads are — 

The destruction of Irish agriculture. 

The destruction of Irish manufactures and of the 
Irish industrial tradition. 

The destruction of Irish commerce and export trade. 

The depopulation of Ireland. 

O'Connell brings a terrible indictment against the Union 
on economic grounds, but the worst phase of the Union had not 
yet shown itself in 1841 when O'Connell wrote, and the seventy 
years since the Famine have been far more ruinous to Ireland 
than the forty years of O'Connell's personal experience. 

O'ConnelFs letter does not deal with the ruin of Irish agri- 
culture, achieved a few years later by the repeal of the Corn 
Laws. But even in 1841 the evil was far advanced. It had 
been coming on gradually since the Union, and was converted 
by the action of the parliament of the "United Kingdom," action 
taken purely in the interest of one part of that realm, into a 
catastrophe of fearful magnitude for Ireland, a catastrophe 
from which Ireland has ever since been suffering both morally 
and materially. 

The aggravated absenteeism of landlords, which O'Con- 
nell showed to have resulted from the Union, worked out dis- 
astrously for Ireland in other ways besides the enormous drain 
of rent to England. As O'Connell had observed, the prosperity 
of Ireland under her free parliament led to a great, and for 
that time natural, increase in her titled nobility. A further 
increase and advance in the number and dignities of the offi- 
cially noble was a prominent element in the corruption by 



192 WHAT MAJDE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

which the Union was effected. After the Union, the Irish homes 
of these ''nobles," when not altogether deserted, as nearly all 
their Dublin mansions and many of their country seats were, 
became mere holiday resorts, and the life of Irish aristocratic 
society was transferred to England — to England, where titled 
landowners were in most cases men of secure and immense 
wealth, of wealth increasing with the industrial development 
of England at the very time while Irish industries, under Eng- 
lish rule, were falling into rapid decay. The result was that, to 
keep pace with the opulence of the English aristocracy, the 
transplanted aristocrats of Ireland were drawn into a vastly 
disproportionate extravagance. In the half -century following 
the Union, half of the Irish titled nobility were ruined, and the 
other half only saved themselves by marriage into wealthy Eng- 
lish families. To keep the feudal ownership of Irish land from 
total collapse after the Famine, England's great remedial 
measure was the foundation of the Encumbered Estates Court 
in Ireland — originally the Encumbered Estates Commission — a 
piece of judicial machinery which, in order to liquidate the 
debts of Irish landowners, faciliated the transfer of ownership 
from an absentee spendthrift gentry to an absentee class of ex- 
tortionate speculators. Thus the grand fabric of feudalism was 
preserved for a few decades, and the condition of the serfs 
called tenants of Irish land was rendered more intolerable. 
When an estate, or part of an estate, was to be sold, the Court 
directed a ''rental" to be drawn up and printed. This docu- 
ment, usually forming a large volume, was examined for the 
Court and issued with the Court's authority. All these rentals 
are now matters of public record. I have seen many of them. 
It was quite a usual thing in them, in setting out the particul- 
ars of the estate, to say that the rents were low and might be 
raised. The intending purchaser was thus invited by Imperial 
authority, to speculate in extortion, in the sweat and blood, 
sorrow and tears, the hunger and madness, often in the lives, 
of men and women and children. Having bid up on the Im- 
perial warranty, the absentee speculator took care to recoup 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 193 

himself by acting on the Imperial suggestion. He made the 
most of the invitation to extort. The Court was and is to this 
day a machine for the maintenance, where possible for the in- 
crease, of England's feudal tribute. It has power to deal with 
any hostile agitation on the part of the serfs by the arbitrary 
method of indefinite ''imprisonment for contempt," as though 
it were a real judicial tribunal and not the auction room of an 
Imperial slave mart. 

The records of this Court are the records of absentee ex- 
travagance brought about by the Union. The total of the 
squanderings of Irish wealth in England was enormous. Of one 
estate alone, that of Lord Portarlington, land to the value of 
one million pounds sterling was sold to redeem the incum- 
brances. 

The effect of this extravagance on Irish agriculture can be 
traced. The ordinary agriculture produce of Ireland at the 
time of the Union comes mainly under four heads : live stock 
and their fodder; cereals; textile material, chiefly flax and 
wool; the food for the husbandman's household, chiefly pota- 
toes and milk. The power of raising rent was unrestricted in 
law, but in practice it could not go beyond or much beyond the 
annual value of the first two classes of produce above-named. 
What is practicable has a tendency to become customary, and 
we have it on the testimony of the time that the fruits of hus- 
bandry among the general class of small farmers were divided 
in this way: potatoes for the home, cereals for rent, flax for 
ready money against various needs. 

When we are considering the effects of the Union, and 
comparing them with the effects of domestic government, we 
must remember that the generation that grew up under the 
free parliament of Ireland and responded to the marvellous in- 
fluence of national liberty did not pass away with the destruc- 
tion of national liberty. The economic forces generated under 
the independent Irish parliament were exhausted gradually 
under the Union, and it was not until the fourth decade of 



194 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

English government set in that the calamitous results of 
"subjugation" became fully apparent. But it would be a mis- 
take to think that these calamitous results were unknown until 
the repeal of the Corn Laws and the awful Famine Years 1845, 
1846, and 1847. O'ConnelFs letter to Shrewsbury was written 
in 1841, while the Corn Laws were still unrepealed, and O'Con- 
nell shows plainly and abundantly that already, in the fortieth 
year of the Union, Ireland had been dragged far on the road to 
economic ruin. O'Connell's testimony cannot be gainsaid. 
His answer to Shrewsbury was an ''open letter," in fact a pub- 
lic repeal manifesto, and the facts stated in it were within the 
knowledge of its readers. They have never been controverted. 
On the contrary they are confirmed and greatly supplemented 
by the evidences published in the semi-official Parliamentary 
Gazetteer for Ireland, issued in 1845. 

So complete has been the devastation wrought by the 
Union, that people now find it hard to realise that Ireland, un- 
der her independent parliament and for twenty or thirty years 
after its treacherous destruction, was as much an industrial 
as an agricultural nation. Ireland in that period had more 
textile workers in proportion to her population than any other 
country in the world. These workers worked in flax, in wool, 
in cotton, and in the coarser fibres of sacking and ropework. 
The spinning and weaving of flax and wool was universal 
throughout Ireland, in factories as well as in homes. The dis- 
trict around Westport is now a "congested district," this title 
having been conferred on such areas by Mr. Arthur Balfour 
in order to fasten in the public mind a belief that these are 
over-populated and might with propriety be depopulated. Some 
of these "congested districts" contained before the Famine four 
times their present population, and if the standard of living 
was low, the inhabitants at the same time were paying an 
enormous annual tribute to their "relentless master," the Pre- 
dominant Partner. This Westport district contained 36,000 
textile workers and several weekly markets for linen yarn and 
linen web. Its export of cereals, including flour and meal, was 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 195 

enormous. At present it has no textile workers, and exports 
only cattle and human beings, and so it is ^'congested." 

As the extravagance of the absentee proprietors increased, 
the prosperity of the country declined. To cope with the de- 
mand for more rent, the people were forced to grow more and 
more cereals. Cereal crops invaded all the ''arable land," in- 
cluding land only capable of spade tillage. To raise potatoes, 
people were forced to "cultivate" land that never was tilled be- 
fore and never again will be tilled. The ridges still mark such 
places in the moors and wastes. Except in Ulster, where the 
pressure of extortion was less and where linen-weaving was 
carried on in factories and industrialised towns, flax, for the 
first time in Irish history, disappeared from cultivation. The 
bleaching greens that existed in every townland can still 
sometimes be located by their name, tuar. The tuirne lin, the 
spinningwheel for flax, is still preserved as a curiosity, in some 
houses, and hunted after by collectors of antiques, and is still 
known in the songs of people who have never seen it at work. 
The whole industry of Ireland was forced to concentrate itself 
on cereals and potatoes — cereals for the Tribute, potatoes to 
feed the serfs. Oatmeal porridge, "chief of Scotia's food," was 
from time immemorial chief also among the foods of the older 
Scotia, Ireland. Even before St. Patrick's time, the porridge 
of Ireland was known in other lands. St. Jerome, in his 
characteristic vigor of controversy, speaks of Pelagius as one 
"whose belly was distended with the porridge of the Irish." 
Hand mills, in common use a century ago, are still to be found, 
though no longer used. Water-mills for grinding oats were 
everywhere. The Tribute, with its relentless demand for the 
money from cereals, put an end to the filling of Irish bellies 
with the porridge of the Irish, and drove the people back on a 
diet of potatoes. Thus at once the standard of living was re- 
duced to the lowest possible degree, and the industries of the 
household and the manual skill traditional throughout ages 
were extinguished. Men and women became potato-fed slaves 
for the production of the Tribute. 



196 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

When this disastrous revolution in the life and habits of 
the people was accomplished, the ''relentless master" in his own 
interest dealt a crushing blow at the new state of things which 
he had forced on Ireland. The Corn Laws alone had made the 
revolution possible. The repeal of the Corn Laws made the 
new life impossible, and the first failure of the potato crop 
that followed began the horrible era of famine, eviction, and 
the conversion of the most fertile regions in Ireland to feeding 
grounds for the roast beef of Old England. O'Connell's last 
speech, the struggling utterance of a dying man, was a pitiful 
appeal to the relentless master on behalf of a people dying in 
thousands from famine and famine fever. The relentless mas- 
ter continued to exact the Tribute, and compelled a famishing 
people to send him their own food. 

O'Connell shows from a Parliamentary Return that in 
1845, while thousands were perishing of famine in Ireland, 
England extracted from Ireland 2,145,772 quarters of grain, 
and 2,481,564 hundredweights of flour and meal, including 
372,719 quarters of wheat and 1,422,379 hundredweights of 
flour and wheatmeal and in the last three months alone of 1845, 
when the Famine was at its height, 32,883 oxen, 583 calves, 
32,576 sheep and lambs, and 104,141 swine. This, during a 
frightful time of starvation and fever, was almost all pure 
Tribute, not commercial exportation in exchange for any sort 
of imports other than English officials, soldiers, arms and 
Coercion Acts. 

So great and manifest have been the calamitous efifects of 
English government since the Famine that a casual observer 
might be inclined to date the injurious operation of the Union 
from that time. O'Connell's letter to Shrewsbury, however, 
was written before the repeal of the Corn Laws, and while the 
Famine was not yet dreamt of, and in this letter O'Connell 
shows clearly and in detail the ruinous consequences of the 
ITnion. From the evidences he has collected one sees plainly 
enough that, even if no great catastrophe like the Famine had 
supervened, the ruin which we have witnessed would have 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 197 

worked out by degrees. The Famine itself was an effect of the 
Union, and was aggravated in its own time by the Union, 
but it was only a grand acceleration of forces already 
steadily at work, forces set in motion and sustained in action 
by Imperial Government and by that alone. 

O'Connell adverts, in passing, to the well known fact that 
before the free Irish Parliament was established in 1782, the 
Irish woolen manufacture, which ''was in a flourishing state at 
the period of the (Williamite) revolution, was openly and 
avowedly crushed to create a monopoly of that manufacture 
for England." This industry was revived under the free 
Parliament and again "flourished in Ireland in all the articles 
of coarser texture. It gave employment to thousands in the 
various town of Ireland. At Carrick-on-Suir alone, it kept in 
constant work and wages more than 7,000 persons, where lately 
there were not fifty employed ! In short, since the Union the 
woolen trade of Ireland has literally been annihilated." 

Linen weaving, as has been said, was universal throughout 
Ireland. "It flourished," says O'Connell, "till the annual ex- 
port of the article reached three millions sterling." The Irish 
had been famed of old for their linen produce. They went to 
battle at Clontarf with the Norsemen : 

"Fine linen shirts on the breasts of the Gael, 
And the Foreigners in one sheet of iron." 
In Henry VIII's time, a sumptuary law was enacted to restrict 
the extravagant wearing of linen in Ireland. So much for the 
legend-mongers who pretend that the Irish linen industry was 
established by French refugees. "Then," says O'Connell, 
"came the Union, and struck off four-fifths of the trade/' 

"Before the Union," he continues, "the refining of sugar 
was a prosperous and lucrative business, giving work and 
wages to thousands. There were in the city of Dublin alone, 
nineteen sugar bakeries. There is now not a single one re- 
maining. This trade is annihilated. 

"Before the Union, the glass manufacture was flourishing 
in Ireland. It is now all but annihilated." (For details, see 



198 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

a recent paper ''Glass-Making in Ireland" by M. S. D. Westropp 
in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy.) 

"Before the Union, the manufacture of cabinets and silks 
in Dublin gave bread to thousands. It was lately on the verge 
of extinction, but has revived in some small degree 'by the 
Repeal movement. 

"Before the Union, the business of printing and book- 
selling — the manufacture of hats — the working in gold and 
silver plate — watch making, and various other branches of trade 
were in a prosperous state in Ireland, which are now annihi- 
lated or in the last stage of an impoverished existence." 

O'Connell, proceeding to show the ruin of Irish industries, 
quotes statistical returns dating from 1800 to 1840. 

Dublin in 1800 had 91 woolen factories employing 4,938 
persons; in 1840, twelve factories, and 682 employes. 

Cork in 1800 had 41 woolen factories with 2,500 employes. 
"That trade is now (1841) completely gone." 

"In Limerick, at the Union, there were 1,000 woolen weav- 
ers. There are not now seventy." 

Rathdrum, Co. Wicklow, is now a "deserted village." Be- 
fore the Union, the flannel manufacture there "gave employ- 
ment to more than 1,000 looms and to several thousands of 
operatives. By 1823, the 1,000 looms had declined to 400; in 
1826 to 300, in 1827 to 200 ; in 1828 to 150 ; in 1830 to 100— and 
in 1832 to 30. And in two years afterwards there was not a 
vestige of this formerly important and remunerative branch of 
industry." All this time, the population was increasing in 
numbers and declining in the standard of living and the means 
of livelihood. 

In Dublin city, "there were at the time of the Union, en- 
gaged in the cotton trade, fifty-five master manufacturers, em- 
ploying 14,500 persons, at wages of forty shillings a week. 
They have fallen (in forty years) to twelve employers and 625 
operatives, and the wages are now only fifteen shillings a week.'' 
The cotton industry of Dublin and other places in Ireland has 
long since been extinguished. 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 199 

"At the Union, the hosiery business flourished in Dublin, 
Balbriggan, Cork, Belfast, Lisburn, Clonmel, Limerick, Water- 
ford, Kilkenny, Carlow, Portarlington, Maryborough, and sev- 
eral other places. But in all those places, the home manufac- 
ture is now (1841) so inconsiderable that this branch of Irish 
industry may, in the words of the report, 'for all practical pur- 
poses be considered as extinct.' 

*'To review the entire (textile) manufactures of Ireland 
... it appears that, at the period of the Union, the number of 
persons directly deriving employment from the woolen, cotton 
and silk manufactures in Ireland exceeded 150,000 in a popula- 
tion of about 4,000,000. At the present day (1841) the entire 
number employed in these manufactures throughout the king- 
dom in a population of 8,000,000 does not exceed 8,000." It will 
be noted that O'Connell does not include in this summary the 
linen trade, of which, he has already said, four-fifths had been 
taken away by the Union. He gives no particulars of the decay 
of many other industries that flourished in Ireland before the 
Union and vanished after it, for example, tanning, boot-making, 
glove-making. The great industrial plan, now so much asso- 
ciated with the success of American industry, of standardising 
the manufacture of articles in general demand in various sizes, 
such as boots, hose, and gloves, was in full and extensive opera- 
tion in Ireland before the Union. 

O'Connell goes on to describe the terrible decline in the 
standard of living among a growing population within the 
generation that followed the Union, quoting, not descriptions 
of the abnormal times of famine, but the Reports of the Com- 
missioners of Poor Law Inquiry in 1834. It was the Union 
that made necessary a systematic and perpetual scheme for the 
relief of the poor in Ireland at the expense of the remainder 
whom the Union also impoverished. In 1830, O'Connell had 
foretold the introduction of the English Poor Law System. 
"The landed proprietors of Ireland," he wrote, "are reduced to 
this dilemma — they must either have a Repeal of the Union or 
Poor Laws. To one or other of these they must come. Poor 



200 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

Laws or a Eepeal of the Union. Beyond this alternative there 
is nothing — the Repeal of the Union or Poor Laws." When he 
wrote again in 1841, the Poor Laws had already been intro- 
duced : **They have been fairly tried in two localities and they 
are found to be a total failure." Nevertheless the State Pauper 
system was extended to every part of Ireland, and since then, 
as a result of the Union, in addition to the tremendous burdens 
of the Imperial land Tribute and the Imperial taxation Tribute 
and an extravagant domestic administration under Imperial 
control, the Irish people have had to bear the further burden of 
a heavy Poor Rate, and what is still worse, the degradation of 
the honest poor. 

Especially remarkable are the particulars quoted by 
O'Connell from the official report, at a time not of famine or 
crop failure but when, as he also states, Ireland's agrarian Tri- 
bute to England, over and above her taxation which was then 
aggravated in violation of the pledges given before the Union 
and to secure the Union, amounted to 6,000,000 a year. (This 
amount was greatly increased in later years.) 

In less fertile parts of Ireland — more fertile, however, than 
many prosperous parts of the Continent — in the countries of 
Galway, Mayo and Donegal, the report tells of people living on 
potatoes, cabbage, and green herbs; of potatoes, the principal 
diet, only sufficient in supply to make one day's allowance do 
for three days; of 200 families in one parish unearthing the 
half-grown potatoes ; of sickness and death from this miserable 
diet; of blood drawn from the live cattle and boiled for food; 
of people driven to gather shell-fish to keep the life in them — 
in short, of a reversion to the conditions of the Early Stone 
Age. In the rich lands of other countries, Longford, Kildare, 
Meath, Cork, Tipperary, the state of the mass of the people 
was not much better. The peasantry gathered wild herbs, in- 
cluding nettles, boiled them with salt, and ate them, sometimes 
with, sometimes without, a potato or a sprinkling of meal for 
flavoring. In County Cork, "many farmers who would former- 
ly have employed laborers are driven by distress to work them- 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 201 

selves and make their sons work. Such persons often make 
their children work, who would otherwise be sent to school. 
The laborers are frequently unable to work for want of suffi- 
cient food." And we are told of laborers, who "remain in bed 
all day, as they said, to stifle the hunger." And all the time, 
the "relentless master" was rooting out Irish industries and 
exacting his enormous Tribute. 

The population of Ireland continued to increase from the 
Union till the Famine, and has decreased steadily since the 
Famine. Between the Union and the Famine in forty-five 
years, the population doubled. Between the Famine and the 
present time, it has been again reduced to the figures of the 
close of the eighteenth centur}' — so that, by the way, there is 
human material still in Ireland for as much industry and pros- 
perity as grew up under the free Irish Parliament. In 1841, 
O'Connell believed that Ireland could support four times her 
then population, which was eight millions. A recent English 
Unionist writer admits that she could now support nearly four 
times her present population. 

The Famine was the turning point, and it might be thought 
therefore that for some reason the Famine was the chief cause 
of the subsequent decline in population. Not that the question 
matters greatly, for economic cause and effect* could not be 
more plainly connected than the Union and the Famine. A 
moment's consideration will show, however, that the Famine 
was no more than a frightful episode in the continuous conse- 
quences of the government of Ireland by England. The Famine 
brought about many thousands of deaths from starvation and 
disease, and the forced emigration of still more numerous thou- 
sands, of whom a large proportion perished during their bar- 
barous transplanting. The meek endurance of the stricken peo- 
ple encouraged England's exactors, the landlords, especially 
the new class of speculators in Irish land, to exterminate the 
people and replace them by cattle that were still more easily 
brought to the flesh market and yielded as large or even a larger 
tribute per acre. But the decline of population continued from 



202 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

the Famiue until the first check was put on feudal absolutism 
in 1871; it continued after the Land League had forced Eng- 
land to reduce the Tribute to what her courts in Ireland deemed 
equitable, and still continues in spite of the expropriation of 
two-thirds of the landlords. Evidently the cause at work has 
been something more permanent in its operation than the 
Famine. If that cause was the Union, we must expect to see 
its effects before as well as after the Famine which began in 
1845. 

But, it may be asked, if the Union has been the cause of 
Ireland's decline in population, why did the population become 
actually doubled between the enactment of the Union and the 
Famine Years? 

To answer this, in the first place it must be remembered 
that a reduction in the standard of living is quite compatible 
with an increase in population and can indeed facilitate an in- 
crease up to a certain limit. The immense population of 
India is not due to a high standard of living. The slums 
of great cities are more populous than the wealthy suburbs. 
A poorhouse, at the same expense, will support many more 
inmates than a palace. In the most fertile parts of Ireland, at 
present, the rural population is least numerous and attains the 
highest standard of living. 

In the second place, the growth of population does not 
react immediately to present economic or political forces. 
Setting aside what are euphemistically called prudential re- 
straints, which happily have never become a calculable factor 
in Irish statistics, the growth of population will depend mainly 
on three factors; the hereditary prolific capacity of the race; 
the conditions of health at a given time, especially of health in 
childhood and up to middle age; and the custom of marrying 
earlier or later in life. The first and third of these factors are 
not liable to be suddenly aftected by a political revolution like 
the Union. 

The Irish people were a prolific race before the Union, and 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 203 

the Union did not change their hereditary physical qualities. 
Early marriages were customary among them before the Union. 
They are no longer customary, as a result of the economic 
strain under which ninety-nine per cent, of the people of Ire- 
land continually live. But we cannot suppose that a social 
custom of this kind underwent a rapid change because the 
power of legislation and taxation was shifted from Dublin to 
London. A more efficient cause was the policy of the land- 
lords, converted by the Union into absentee exactors of Tri- 
bute, a policy gradually carried into effect, of restricting and 
reducing the number of holdings and therefore of households. 
There is no doubt, however, that manifold economic pressure, 
both in town and country, diminished the marriage rate by 
making the parents of marriageable persons more parsimon- 
ious. Three generations under one roof was once normal in 
Ireland. Now it is exceptional. 

Apart, however, from all such matters of argument and 
inference, O'Connell has shown that, even before the Famine 
and before the population had begun to diminish, — for he did 
not live to see the worst, — the adverse influences created by the 
Union were already in potent operation. The increase of 
population in the decade 1821-1831 was 965,570. In the decade 
1831-1841, from an immensely larger adult population than in 
the preceding decade, the increase was only 437,980. These 
figures show clearly that the momentum of Irish prosperity 
was completely exhausted within the first generation that fol- 
lowed Ireland's "subjugation," and that the conversion of a 
growing into a diminishing population from 1851 onwards was 
merely the continuation of a process already plainly visible at 
work in the second preceding decade. O'Connell treats of 
this matter, not in the letter to Lord Shrewsbury, written be- 
bore the Irish Census of 1841 was published, but in a speech 
in Parliament, February 17, 1846, on the subject of the Famine. 
Had there been no such concentrated calamity as the Famine, 
the movement in the population rate suffices to show that the 
subsequent decline in population would still have taken place 



204 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

as a result of the economic oppression imposed on Ireland by 
the Union. 

Ireland now stands face to face with a new and double 
menace — the abandonment of her claims to self-government, 
even of the partial recognition of those claims by the Statesmen 
who stood pledged for years to their partial recognition — and 
the imposition of a further intolerable burden of taxation to 
meet the colossal expenditure of an Imperial trade war, the 
greatest war in the history of mankind. 

Let Irishmen recognise, with Cardinal Mercier, that pat- 
riotism is a great virtue and a sacred duty, worthy to be linked 
with the virtues and the duties that Christianity enjoins on all 
mankind in common. We are taught that, under the Com- 
mandment, "Honor thy father and thy mother" we are bound 
also to obey all rightful authority. Is it too much to suppose 
that the virtue and duty of patriotism, of honor and fidelity 
towards our fatherland and our nation, are comprised in the 
same Commandment? 

If patriotism is a conscientious duty, towards what object 
is it directed? There cannot be a duty without an object. A 
duty does not begin and end within itself. It is towards some- 
thing. The duty which we owe, something must be entitled to 
receive. The duty of patriotism is due to our country and 
nation, towards our fatherland and the family who are its 
children. An empire which is not a nation cannot command 
the duty of patriotism. The British Empire, besides Irishmen, 
includes also Englishmen, Scotsmen, and Welshmen, French 
Canadians, Afrikanders, Hindoos, Burmese, Kaffirs, American 
Indians, Australian Aborigines. Whatever may be our duties 
towards these, nobody imagines and nobody pretends that 
patriotism is one of those duties. The sentiment called Imper- 
ialism is entirely distinct from patriotism, and we have yet to 
learn that any reputable Christian teacher has placed Imperial- 
ism among the Christian duties and virtues. The object of 
patriotism is nationality. 

O'Connell has shown that Irish nationality and Irish pros- 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 205 

perity go hand in hand, that the extinction of Irish national 
rights and liberties destroyed in a generation the marvellous 
prosperity which the exercise of those rights and liberties, even 
through a cori'upt Parliament, had built up in a still shorter 
time. In fourteen years, the free Parliament, won for Ireland 
by Irish Volunteers, a Parliament largely composed of rake- 
helly squireens and the hangers-on of the aristocracy, secured 
for Ireland such an advance in agriculture, manufactures, pub- 
lic improvements, foreign trade, and every pathway of pros- 
perity as no other country has ever made in fourteen decades 
of years. The same can and must again be done for Ireland. 
We have the same resources, when we are free to use them. 
Our present population is one and a half times greater than 
the population of Ireland in 1782. Ireland is not a poor coun- 
try, she is a robbed country. The robbery is still going on. We 
have to stop it and to secure full control over our own resources, 
and full liberty to use them for Ireland's sole benefit. Without 
control we have no security, without liberty we have no im- 
pulse. 

Under the Union we have suffered such wrongs in peace 
as no other nation of modern times has suffered in war. 
"Revenge" is our duty if we accept our duty from our Rulers. 
We do not accept it. We do not seek vengeance. "Vengeance 
is mine, saith the Lord, I will repay." Amen ! We even pray 
that He may never make us His instruments of vengeance. 
While the mighty ones of the empires are preaching hatred on 
every side, we ask to be freed from hatred within and without. 
The losses inflicted on us almost stagger imagination. We do 
not even demand restitution or indemnity. Our demand is for 
a complete cessation ; No more of interference : let us take our 
way. "Let my people go." Our journey has begun. 



WHEN THE GOVERNMENT PUBLISHES 
SEDITION 

By Arthur Griffith^ 1915. 

IF the writings of Swift and Mitchel were obliterated from 
the nation's memory, there would still remain two docu- 
ments to preach as fiercely as Swift and Mitchel have done 
what English Government in Ireland meant and means. These 
seditious documents are issued under the authority of his 
Britannic Majesty's Government. They are the British Govern- 
ment's Census Report on Ireland and the British Government's 
Annual Finance Return. 

It is idle — British-Imperially speaking — to think of end- 
ing sedition and treason in Ireland by suppressing newspapers 
and imprisoning or shooting their editors, while such pernicious 
bluebooks and returns are freely sold by Mr. Ponsonby in 
Grafton Street, Dublin, at a price which places them within 
reach of many. Even if the price were prohibitive to the Irish, 
it is still certain that money would be found somewhere to 
purchase copies. The prohibition of the sale of British blue- 
books and official returns relating to the population and finance 
of this island is the one course consistent with the policy of 
making the Irish tamely submit to extirpation that England, — 
masquerading as the British Empire — may wax fatter and 
fatter. 

That the English Government has been wholly unconscious 
of the danger of publishing and selling these documents in Ire- 
land is not a fact. It has only miscalculated their effect. It 
correctly argues that few people will read such returns, fewer 
study them, and that of the few not a moiety will be able to 
comprehend them, for to most men these marshalled columns 
of figures must spell confusion. It calculates that the small 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 207 

number who may grasp the meaning of the figures will be dis- 
posed of by self-interest, indifference, indolence, or lack of 
power or opportunity to make them understood of the people. 
It has generally been right. The last thing the average man 
likes is statistical articles, for the Statist, as a rule, is a bore. 

Still, the Census and Finance Returns are the most poten- 
tially dangerous printed matter England can suffer to be 
published in Ireland, for every now and then, a man will ser- 
iously study and grasp and attempt to make his countrymen 
grasp their meaning, and if he should succeed, then Ireland 
will — despite Empire-Leaguery, Union- Jackery, and Place- 
huntery, — kick. Feebly or forcibly she will kick. 

Premising then, that if we were the English Government 
in Ireland — that if we were apostles of the faith that the bleed- 
ing white of this land is essential to England's plutocracy, and 
that whatever is essential to England's plutocracy, it is a holy 
and a wholesome thing to do — then we would regard with 
grim suspicion that respectable old gentleman in Grafton 
Street, Dublin, who has never wittingly done ill to mortal, and 
that we should discern in his book-shop whole arsenals of 
treason. Premising this we shall hereby point out, discover, 
felon-set, in a word, E. Ponsonby, licensed by his Majesty's Sta- 
tionery Offices to sell in these islands the General Report of the 
Census of Ireland as presented to both Houses of Parliament by 
command of his Majesty. We testify that Mr. Ponsonby sold 
us this magazine of sedition for the sum of five shillings and 
threepence, which included the impression of the British Lion 
and Unicorn, represented in this instance dancing on their 
hind legs with their tails cocked up, celebrating — possibly — 
tidings of comfort and joy to be disclosed inside to the well- 
wishers of England's Absolutism. 

And we certify that having carefully examined and col- 
lated this return sold us by Mr. Ponsonby with the General 
Report of the Census of Ireland for 1841, published by his 
Majesty's Stationery Office, and sold by Mr. Ponsonby's pre- 
decessors (now beyond all possibility of punishment for sedi- 



208 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

tion or treason), we have found the following facts disclosed, 
which would most seriously hamper Mr. John Redmond and his 
colleagues. 

First, then, this report discloses that in the year 1841 
there were on the soil of Ireland, eight million one hundred and 
seventy-five thousand men, women, and children, that the pop- 
ulation was multiplying at the rate of 9 per cent, per decade, 
and that, therefore, in the year 1911, there should have been 
sixteen millions of people within our shores. As there were but 
four million three hundred and ninety thousand, it is evident 
that eleven million six hundred and ten thousand of the Irish 
race have disappeared somewhere in the past seventy years. 
Actually four millions of people have vanished, and the chil- 
dren whom they begot and their children's children who should 
form the extra eleven million six hundred and ten thousand on 
our soil to-day are exiles from Ireland — citizens of other coun- 
tries, whose prosperity, power, and glory they are building up. 
Some of them are Americans, some of them are Irish- Ameri- 
cans, some of them are Canadians, some of them are Austral- 
ians, others are Afrikanders. Some of them are proud of their 
origin, some of them do not know it, some of them are ashamed 
of it, some of them are still traditionally Irish Nationalists, 
some of them are British Imperialists, some of them leading 
citizens of other countries — some of them are good, some of 
them are indifferent, some of them are bad. What they are 
does not immediately concern us. This does — they are eleven 
million six hundred and ten thousand people who have involun- 
tarily lost their heritage and they are eleven million six hun- 
dred and ten thousand whom Ireland has lost. 

In the year 1841 the intelligent schoolboy in Germany 
asked to name the first five States of Europe in population 
would have replied — ''France, England, Prussia, Spain, and 
Ireland." In that year there were no other States or King- 
doms of Europe larger in its people than this island. The 
Kingdoms of Sweden and Norway, and Holland and Greece 
combined had not so many people as Ireland then possessed. 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 209 

We had two men to every man in Belgium, more men than 
northern Italy, and man for man with southern Italy. We had 
two men to every man in Bavaria, more than two men to every 
man in Portugal, and considerably more men than Roumania, 
Bulgaria, Servia, Albania, and Turkey-in-Europe reckoned to- 
gether, and for every five men England possessed, we had al- 
most three. 

If that intelligent German schoolboy were now asked to 
name the States of Europe in order of their population, he 
would not name Ireland fifth, nor even fifteenth. If he were 
asked whether all the States of Europe had increased in pop- 
ulation since 1841 he would reply, "All but one — Ireland." If 
he were asked whether the cause was that war had ravaged 
Ireland during the period while peace prevailed elsewhere, he 
would reply that war had not visited Ireland, but had visited 
most of the other States of Europe — that France, Prussia, 
Austria, Hungary, Bavaria, Bohemia, Saxony, Wurtemburg, 
Italy, Turkey, Roumania, Bulgaria, Servia, Greece, and Den- 
mark, had all been engaged in war within the time, and yet 
their peoples had multiplied, while Ireland, dwelling in peace, 
had seen her people diminish as no war in the history of modem 
Europe had diminished a people. 

If he were asked the cause of this unique disappearance of 
a people, he would reply, had he studied the character of the 
Irish as contributed from English sources to the German 
school-books, and printed in some of them until recent times, 
that the Irish were a people lazy beyond all men, of a disposi- 
tion treacherous and ferocious, intractable and incapable, so 
besotted that they would prefer to die of hunger or leave their 
country rather than toil there for a livelihood. In fact, a peo- 
ple whom any nation less forbearing than the English and 
burdened by responsibility for them would be inclined to let 
perish in their viciousness. 

However, let us return to Mr. Ponsonby's sedition-mon- 
gering publication. Think of the effect of such a fact as this 



210 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

on the impressionable mind of an honest and robust Irishman 
on whom the Recruiting-Sergeant has fixed his eye: 

Every country in Europe has increased its population 
since 1841 except Ireland. 

Poland, under the Russians, has increased its people. 

Poland, under the Germans, has increased its people. 

Poland, under the Austrians, has increased its people. 

Finland, under the Russians, has increased its people. 

Ireland, under the English, has lost three-fourths of its 
people. 

Holland has doubled, Belgium has nearly doubled, Greece 
has quadrupled, Sweden and Norway have more than doubled, 
Portugal, Switzerland, and Denmark have increased by 50 per 
cent., Roumania, Servia, Finland, and Bulgaria have all 
doubled, or more than doubled, their populations. These com- 
prise all the small nationalities of Europe, except Ireland. 
Alone in Europe — alone in the civilized world — "the sister 
island of England," this "integral" Kingdom of the British 
Empire has decreased in its population. For such a decrease in 
days of peace history furnishes no parallel. 

Imagine, at this crisis in the fortunes of the England who 
managed this extirpation for us, Mr. Ponsonby permitted to sell 
a Blue-book which discloses such facts. Would it, we ask with 
the "Daily Express," be tolerated in any other capital in the 
world ? Certain we are that if this English plan of getting rid 
•of itfe rivals had been followed by Austria in the case of Hun- 
gary, no Buda Pest Ponsonby would be permitted to sell over 
his counter the Austrian official document indicating how it 
had been done. We have a good deal of sympathy with the 
"Daily Express" point of view. If it be necessary in the in- 
terest of England to exterminate the Irish, it is certainly an 
abuse of English freedom of the Press in Ireland to refer to 
the matter. It is perfectly free to the Press to take England's 
standpoint, or if it has a conscientious scruple, to remain 
decently silent. 

As England wants men just now, the following potentially 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 211 

seditious figures, published and guaranteed by the English 
Government, will show where she can seek for them : 

Population of England in 1841 14,995,138 

Population of Ireland in 1841 8,175,124 

Population of England in 1911 34,045,270 

Population of Ireland in 1911 4,390,219 

In the seventy years Ireland lost nearly half her popula- 
tion, while England more than doubled hers. In 1841 the Eng- 
lish had not two men to our one. Now they have more than 
eight men to our one. They want our one to do the fighting, 
and Mr. Kedmond has promised them he will see that they get 
him. It is sedition to object. 

In 1841 we find that Ireland had more people than all the 
British colonies put together. These colonies have now four 
times the population of Ireland. It took armed insurrection 
against England in Canada and in Australia, and passive in- 
surrection against England at the Cape to make her take her 
claws off the colonies and let them govern themselves. Under 
their own Governments they have quadrupled the population of 
this island upon which England insisted on keeping her claws. 

The following figures, certified by the Government of 
England, show the number of male inhabitants in Ireland 
seventy years ago, and now : 

Ulster (1841) 1,186,190 

Ulster (1911) 770,862 

Munster (1841) 1,209,971 

Munster (1911) 526,030 

Leinster (1841) 968,747 

Leinster (1911) 582,967 

Connacht (1841) 707,842 

Connacht (1911) 312,089 

From this the seditiously inclined and all who have, to the 
insecurity of English rule in Ireland, learned the first four rules 



212 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

of arithmetic, will be able to deduce that it has been necessary 
to the English Government in Ireland to destroy more than 
one-third of the men of Ulster and Leinster, and more than half 
of the men of Munster and Connacht during seventy years of 
peace. 

Imagine Mr. Ponsonby permitted to sell this information 
while recruits for the Inniskilling Fusiliers, the Leinster Regi- 
ment, the Munster Fusiliers, and the Connacht Rangers are 
urgently needed to sustain the power that has swept four of 
every eleven Ulstermen, four of every nine Leinstermen, four 
of every seven Connachtmen, and seven of every twelve Mun- 
stermen out of Ireland. 

We glean from Mr. Ponsonby and Mr, Ponsonby's predeces- 
sor in the Blue-book publishing line, that these Irish refugees, 
for whom no England and no West Britain wept, fled from the 
flag which Irishmen are now appealed to to uphold. From the 
period of the Union, until that of the artificial famine, 95 per 
cent, of the Irish who went into exile chose to go to the British 
colonies — only 5 per cent of them making for the United States. 
The Triumph of the Flag over Ireland from 1841 onwards re- 
volutionized the mind of the Irish emigrant. He fled to the 
United States to get away from it, a fact which has had some 
bearing on its fortunes. 

Ulster, which our truthful neighbour has always repre- 
sented as the good, pious, law-abiding, pro-English part of Ire- 
land, and consequently, as rioting in progress and prosperity 
had in 1841, just 2,227,152 people on its soil. In 1911 it had 
1,582,826. It is calculated to breed sedition in Ulster to permit 
Mr. Ponsonby to retail official returns to this effect across his 
respectable counter. Some day, despite the Ulster Unionist 
Council, and the Belfast Press, the Orangemen will get to hear 
about it and begin to think. And the effort to dissipate the 
dawn of reason in the Orange mind by assuring it that after 
all it was only the Papists who were exterminated will be 
seriously hampered by the injudicious disclosures in these 
Ponsonby Blue-Books. Happily for England there was no 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 213 

religious census of Ireljind taken in 1841, but we discover these 

figures for 1834 : 

Irish Protestant Episcopalians (1834) 852,064 

Irish Protestant Episcopalians (1911) 576,611 

Actual Missing 275,453 

Irish Presbyterians (1834) 642,356 

Irish Presbyterians (1911) 440,525 



201,831 
It was essential to England to wipe out one-third of the 
Episcopalians and one-third of the Presbyterians as well as 
one-half of the Irish Catholics in the life-time of the old men 
amongst us. One out of every three Irish Protestants has been 
in the last seventy years extinguished from his country by 
English legislation. To make omelettes one must break eggs. 
The fact that the number of Protestants in England has nearly 
trebled in the same period, is one that, we submit to the Eng- 
lish authorities in this country, is likely to make Irish Pro- 
testants reflect if they are allowed to realize it. And we know 
of nothing more dangerous to the security of English Govern- 
ment in Ireland, than that the people of Ireland should be 
induced to reflect. For years the Parliamentary Party has, 
with superhuman devotion to the cause of the Loaves and 
Fishes, gallantly succeeded in preventing them from indulging 
in any reflection on their country's position. But now there is 
a daily increasing danger through Mr. Ponsonby. 

For instance, an Episcopalian schoolboy, getting hold of 
the Census Returns and the 1834 figures, might work out that 
the number of Episcopalians in Ireland to-day should be 
1,550,000, and finding that instead, the number is but 576,000, 
start furiously reflecting as to the wherefore and the why of the 
disappearance. Or a Presbyterian student of divinity, coming 
across the Pernicious Blue-Book, might extract therefrom in 
one minute's arithmetical calculation that the sum total of the 



214 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

Presbyterians of Ireland today should be 1,200,000 souls, and 
finding that there were but 440,000, set his mind pondering 
until it alighted upon the cold truth — that whether Ireland be 
Catholic or Episcopalian or Presbyterian, it will be devastated 
in its people and in its trade so long as what is termed the 
"British Empire" is England — and nothing but England, 

''Ireland," wrote Junius a hundred and fifty years ago, 
"has been uniformly plundered and oppressed." Save for the 
few years between 1782 and 1800 the policy of plunder and op- 
pression has been pursued unbroken since Junius wrote sedi- 
tion. 

England having destroyed our constitution, suppressed 
our Parliament, loaded her debt on to our shoulders, ruined our 
trade and commerce, turned our tillage-fields into cattle- 
ranches, trebled our taxation and halved our population — all 
within a century — wants what is left of us to fight for her 
supremacy over the world. To protest is seditious. Even 
though her heart and her interest willed, she can never erase 
the evil she has done this country. She cannot give us back our 
people, but she could have given us back our political liberties 
and permitted us by their wise direction to regain within the 
next hundred years, the place in the world we held a hundred 
years ago. This she has not done — this she has pledged herself 
to her Ulster dupes not to do. In the name of Home Rule, she 
proposes finally to extinguish the Irish nation, if she overcomes 
Germany, by partitioning it, as with her connivance a century 
and a half ago Russia, Prussia, and Austria, partitioned 
Poland. But so long as Mr. Ponsonby flourishes in Grafton 
St., Dublin, bravely distributing his Britannic Majesty's Cen- 
sus Reports on Ireland and Finance Accounts, so long will 
sedition prosper. 



THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE IRISH 
VOLUNTEERS 

BY 

Tele O'Rahilly 

IN the following pages there is of necessity frequent mention 
of Mr, John Redmond and of various actions taken by him 
with which I most profoundly disagree. From this, how- 
ever, it is not to be understood that this pamphlet is an indict- 
ment of the Chairman of the Parliamentary Party, or that it is 
published in order to weaken his position, to undermine his 
influence, or to supplant his leadership. 

If his name figures prominently in this record it is solely 
because a knowledge of the incidents with which he was asso- 
ciated is essential to an intelligent understanding of either the 
past or the present of the Volunteer movement. 

Far from attributing to Mr. Eedmond the responsibility 
for these actions or for their result (the disruption of the 
Volunteers), I am perfectly convinced that every single step 
that is recounted here was taken by him, not of his own free 
•will but against his better judgment, and at the imperious dic- 
tation of the English masters of this country, who, whether 
Liberals or Conservatives, Democrats or Aristocrats, are but 
one in their dealings with Ireland. 

Nor need this hypothesis be regarded as unconvincing or 
far-fetched. It covers all the facts; it explains things that are 
otherwise incredible, and instead of being improbable it is 
really rather self-evident. That the British majority in West- 
minster dominates and will continue to dominate the Irish 
minority is a mathematical certainty as obvious as the fact 
that 567 exceeds 103. 

Ireland has no longer a Press. The majority of the news- 
papers which are now printed in Ireland, and which unfor- 



216 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

tunately still retain their Irish names, have been sold bodily 
to the British Government in exchange for quarter-page adver- 
tisements. I refrain from saying that they were sold "body 
and soul," because there is not sufficient evidence to show that 
they ever possessed any souls to sell. 

On the other hand, the Government has, with refreshing 
frankness, suppressed practically every Irish journal that re- 
fused to be either bribed or bullied into allowing its editorial 
policy to be dictated by the War Office. It is true that Eoin 
Mac Neill's organ. The Irish Volunteer, after two attempts 
to suppress it, is still appearing. The fact is worth noting, and 
may indicate that even the British Government realises the un- 
wisdom of exasperating men who mean what they say and who 
have aiTns in their hands. 

But one swallow doesn't make a summer, and since the 
Irish Press as a whole is either defunct or devoted to the pub- 
lication of Romance, it is desirable that the public should have 
an opportunity of hearing some of the real facts with regard to 
the Irish Volunteer Movement. Hence this pamphlet. 

The Irish Volunteers (as distinct, of course, from the 
Ulster Volunteer Force) were started in Dublin in November, 
1913, by a dozen men who came together at Wynn's Hotel to 
discuss with Eoin Mac A^eill the formation of an Irish Volun- 
teer Army. Previous to this, indeed, a journalist in West 
Meath, who is said to have conceived the possibility of a "Mid- 
land Volunteer Force," had published a report of the inception 
of such a body in Athlone. Whether the Midland Volunteers 
had any real existence except in the news columns is much de- 
bated, and seems open to doubt, but there is no doubt at all that 
the organisers of the Irish Volunteers absolutely failed to dis- 
cover any Volunteers either in Athlone or the Midlands until 
long after the Wynn's Hotel meeting. 

As the invitations to that meeting were written and issued 
by myself, I am in a position to know something of the per- 
sonnel of the original Committee ; and I say now that the men 
invited were deliberately selected not on Party, Political or 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 217 

Sectarian lines, but solely because they were amongst the sin- 
cerest Nationalists of my acquaintance in Dublin. 

Besides Eoin Mac Neill, they included Bulmer Hobson, P. 
H. Pearse, Seau Mac Dermott, W. J. Kyau, Eamonu Ceanut, 
Sean Fitzgibbon, J. A. Deakin, Pierce Beasley, Joseph Camp- 
bell, and the writer, and in view of the repeated assertions of 
certain eminently truthful orators and journalists associated 
with Parliamentarianism, it is worthy of note that of the 
twelve invited only three were then members of the Sinn Fein 
party. Lest it might savor too much of Sinn Fein, Arthur 
Griiffith's name was deliberately not included, while Mr. D. P. 
Moran, the Editor of the Leader, and a consistent supporter of 
the Parliamentary Party, was asked to attend. 

As a tribute to the efficiency with which the autocrats of 
Dublin Castle scrutinise our movements and correspondence 
even in peace time, it should be recorded that within an hour 
of our first meeting, two police detectives called at the hotel 
for our names and the details of our business. Ingeniously 
asserting that we were sporting men who had met to pull off 
an illegal sweep, they interviewed the hotel people, obtained 
all the information that they could give them, and retired, 
after cautioning the management against allowing us to use the 
rooms again. 

As we were all in agreement that the movement must be 
broadly National and not confined to, or controlled by, any 
particular party, our first effort was to secure the cooperation 
of men prominent in existing organisations such as the Par- 
liamentary Party, the United Irish League, the Ancient Order 
of Hibernians, the Gaelic Athletic Association, the Foresters, 
etc., and each of us was told off for special duty in this con- 
nection. But we found that the task was one of considerable 
difficulty, and refusals were the order of the day. I, for in- 
stance, was deputed to secure Lord Mayor Sherlock, who I 
found was unwilling, and Professor Kettle, who I was in- 
formed was unwell. It will be remembered that Mr. Sherlock, 
who refused our invitation to join the Committee when it was a 



218 WHAT MADE IRELAND ^INN FEIN 

week old, became later one of Mr. Redmond's nominees on that 
body, and that Professor Kettle has since recovered sufficiently 
from his indisposition to take quite an active part in the 
Movement. 

Such refusals, however, did not alter our determination to 
maintain the non-party character of the Volunteers. In every 
case that arose of the appointment of committees, of officials, 
of organisers, or of public speakers, we insisted that all poli- 
tical views should be fairly represented, and we repeatedly re- 
fused to sanction arrangements when this condition was not 
observed. 

While we secured by this policy the assistance of some of 
our best and hardest workers, we also got hold of a few others 
who have since caused us rather to regret our success. 

The new Committee at once decided to place their policy 
before a public meeting at the Eotunda ; and they modestly be- 
gan by hiring the Small Concert Room. As the public interest 
grew they decided that it was wise to secure an option on the 
Large Concert Room ; and as the day of the meeting approached 
they found that they would need still more space, and took the 
Rink in addition. As it turned out, the crowd not only filled 
the Rink and the Room but overflowed into the grounds, where 
a meeting of several thousand people was also held. 

The Committee appealed to the manhood of Ireland to 
enrol and arm themselves in order to secure and maintain the 
rights and liberties of the Irish people. The manhood of Ireland 
responded to the call, and enrolling in thousands, proceeded to 
arm themselves. 

Within a week the British Government, which held office by 
virtue of the Irish Party's vote, issued a Proclamation prohibit- 
ing the importation of arms into Ireland. The first blow had 
been struck at the Irish Volunteers ; and it could not have been 
struck without consultation with, and the consent of, Mr. 
Redmond. 

But, thanks to the spirit of the men of Dublin, the Volun- 
teers survived the blow. We assured our men that, Proclama- 



WHAT MAX)E IRELAND SINN FEIN 219 

tion or no Proclamation, we would procure arms for them; 
and the men accepted our assurance. For months we drilled 
our recruits in halls shadowed by those broad-shouldered and 
dignified gentlemen of leisure whom Dublin Castle dresses in 
plain clothes and apparently expects us not to recognise as 
policemen. For months we preached the doctrine of Irish self- 
reliance in the teeth of the open hostility of the professional 
politicians, their organs, their organizations, and their sup- 
porters. Men who were elected by Irish voters to free their 
country from British domination, and who are paid by the Brit- 
ish Government 400 pounds a year to stimulate their enthus- 
iasm, publicly denounced Volunteering as a muddle-headed pol- 
icy which their supporters should avoid. Orthodox Hibernians 
and United Irish Leaguers were expected to leave the new 
movement severely alone. The Press, although then in the 
hands of its original proprietors, boycotted the Irish Volun- 
teers nearly as completely as it does now under its new man- 
agement. As the Irish Times remarked, the Volunteer Move- 
ment had, at any rate, "no Press." The coercion of Ireland 
under the Arms Proclamation provoked no protest from the 
stalwarts at Westminster. The machine was working smooth- 
ly in the effort to stifle the movement. 

And still the Volunteers grew. They grew in numbers, in 
strength and in self-confidence till it became no longer safe 
for their enemies to display their hostility openly ; and a more 
subtle course had to be adopted to destroy as promising an 
organization as ever strove for Ireland's freedom. 

All this time we had been busily working to surmount the 
greatest of our problems, the problem of securing arms. With 
the ports closed, money scarce, and the Government, the Party, 
and the Press alike opposed to us, it wasn't easy. Curiously 
enough our utmost efforts failed to secure any assistance from 
the Irish people on the Continent, the very people who could 
most easily and effectively have helped us. Unable to tele- 
graph or telephone, and compelled to use the post with the 
most extreme discretion, it was after prolonged negotiations 



220 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

that we came into touch with a lot of 11 m/m Mauser Kifles, 
samples of which we got despatched to London, where I in- 
spected them and found them satisfactory. Our resources were 
still insufficient to pay for any quantity, and it was only by an 
individual guaranteeing the cost of a cargo that we got the 
work of arranging for a shipment under way. 

It was while we were busy with this work that we learnt of 
a new development. We discovered that the Hibernians had 
received secret instructions to form themselves Volunteer Com- 
panies, to affiliate with Headquarters, to secure control of the 
movement in their districts, and, in fact, to take the very steps 
that would enable them to control the coming Convention and 
to swamp the original Volunteers. That this was not bona 
fide recruiting became apparent when the two Johns and Joe, 
as they are playfully called by an affectionate electorate, 
publicly announced that they had been converted to the Volun- 
teer idea, and secretly requested that they should be given con- 
trol of the movement. 

All the insidious influences known to the politicians' art 
were immediately brought into play inside as well as outside of 
the Committee. The primrose path to place, power and profit 
was temptingly disphn^ed to Eoiu Mac Xeill and his associates, 
but it was in vain, and the request to hand over the Volun- 
teers, wrapped in brown paper and tied with a string as it 
were, to the mercies of the men who had till then been engaged 
in an effort to strangle them, was gracefully and politely de- 
clined. 

The attempt to capture the Volunteers by stealth had 
failed. 

Then came the last and most brilliant coup, the master 
stroke, to wit, Mr. Kedmond's public announcement that the 
Provisional Committee was not sufficiently representative, and 
that he should be allowed to nominate twenty-five additional 
men to make it so. The reply was an offer by the Committee to 
have a new representative elected by each of the thirty-two 
Counties in Ireland, and Mr. Redmond's answer was a candid 



I 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 221 

and undisguised threat that if his Party were not permitted to 
nominate twenty-five representative men from different parts 
of the country he would proceed forthwith, by establishing a 
rival authority, to disrupt the movement. Now as the public 
were at this time keenly interested in the fate of the Home Rule 
Bill, which had not yet been shelved, it was quite possible that 
Mr. Redmond could have done this, and since his purpose was 
palpably, then as now, to emasculate the movement, it was 
certain that he would have done so. 

A matter that could not be understood at the time, but 
which must be remembered in connection with the crisis that 
resulted, was that the Provisional Committee had on the high 
seas at that very period their secret shipments of arms ; and 
were already arranging those elaborate schemes for landing 
them which afterwards materialised at Howth and Kilcool. 
They knew that any division in their forces such as would cer- 
tainly result from the disruption threatened by Mr. Redmond 
would inevitably lead to the miscarriage of their plans and the 
probable loss of their arms. Realising the superlative impor- 
tance of safeguarding the guns, and confronted with the alter- 
natives of either making terms with Mr. Redmond or of 
splitting the ^^olunteers, probably losing their arms, and cer- 
tainly furnishing Mr. Redmond with something that he sorely 
needed, namely, an excuse for losing Home Rule, they agreed 
to permit his Nominees to sit on the Committee without, how- 
ever, co-opting them as members thereof. 

The nominations were published, and the list was in itself 
an absolute breach of faith with the Committee and with the 
public. It was not a list of "representative men from different 
parts of the country," as had been publicly promised. Eleven 
of the Nominees were from Dublin City, the over-representation 
of which city on the Original Committee Mr. Redmond alleged 
as a reason for interfering with it. 

Most of them were not "representative men" in any sense, 
or rather they represented fields of activity which well-wishers 
of the Volunteers would prefer not to be represented. Not a 



222 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

single military man secured the Party's nomination to the 
Volunteer Committee, but several eminent Ecclesiastics were 
appointed, presumably to represent the Church militant. How- 
ever, the Nominees took their seats, and we patiently awaited 
developments. 

Now I should dislike to malign the Nominees, but if the 
object of the great majority of them was not to keep the Volun- 
teers unarmed then they were the victims of a chain of circum- 
stances and coincidences that was, shall 1 say, most unfor- 
tunate. 

We were given to understand, for instance, that Mr. Red- 
mond at this time had also on the seas a cargo of magnificent 
rifles destined for the Volunteers, and never was there keener 
interest in a regatta than we had as to whether Mr. Red- 
mond's steamer or our "White Yacht" of Howth fame would 
first reach the shores of Ireland. Mr. Redmond's boat, I am 
told, was called "L'Avenir," which means in French "The 
Future," and'it was a singularly appropriate title, because she 
never came. 

Having left Antwerp and come within sight of the Irish 
coast, she, for some mysterious reason, which we were not al- 
lowed to learn, changed her mind about the Volunteers and 
returned to Belgium. 

Apropos of Belgium, of whose friendship and services to 
Ireland we have recently heard so much, it is worth while 
recording the only experience that the Irish Volunteers had of 
her friendship and services. Immediately after Mr. Redmond's 
steamer had, with elaborate secrecy, left the Belgian coast, the 
British Government was informed ^y a letter from a Belgian 
Customs Official that her manifest and her alleged destination 
were false, and that her contents were really arms "for the 
Irish Insurgents." 

The enlarged Committee, however, was not concerning it- 
self unduly with the contraband arms traffic. It had other 
activities which kept it fully occupied. It appointed a Stand- 
ing Committee with a solid reactionary majority; it passed a 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 223 

delicious resolution demanding that all rifles already secured 
by the Volunteers of Muuster, Leinster and Counaught should 
be "loaned" to safe men in Ulster, and it gravely went through 
the form of requesting Mr, Redmond to hand over the Volun- 
teer funds that had reached him, a request which Mr. Redmond, 
with becoming dignity, ignored. Things were comparatively 
quiet at Headquarters, and there being neither any quantity of 
arms available nor any apparent prospect of them, it looked 
as if the work of turning the embryo army into a political 
machine could be accomplished without a hitch. 

But when on July 2Gth the "White Yacht," harbinger of 
Liberty, suddenly appeared out of nowhere, and, on the stroke 
of the appointed hour, landed her precious freight at Howth, 
history was in the making. 

Twenty minutes sufficed to discharge her cargo; as many 
motor cars liew with the ammunition to prearranged caches; 
and for the first time in a century one thousand Irishmen with 
guns on their shoulders marched on Dublin town ! 

The asinine interference of the garrison, the bayonetting 
at Clontarf and the massacre of women and children at Bach- 
elors' Walk that followed, are incidents which are familiar to 
all whose memories are not exclusively occupied with the woes 
of Servia. A week later we landed our second cargo at Kil- 
cool,* and it was when we had thus placed arms in the hands 



* With regard to the Kilcool enterprise a very inexplicable incident oc- 
curred which some future historian may be able to unravel. The or- 
iginal intention was to run one yacht to Kilcool on the night of 
Saturday, July 25th, and the second to Howth on the following day. 
At noon on Saturday, however, we in Dublin got a code message 
that the Kilcool yacht had split her mainsail in the Irish Sea, and 
that the repair would take several days, thus necessitating a post- 
ponement. Three hours later, by the most extraordinary acci- 
dent, I learnt that an unknown lady had just sent a message to 
Dublin Castle stating that a quantity of arms for the Irish Volun- 
teers had been on that forenoon landed on the coast near Dublin. 
The plot thickened still further when we found that soldiers were 
on that same Saturday being conveyed through the south of the city 
in motor furniture vans. Do these facts account for the amazing 
behaviour of the Castle on the following day? 



224 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

of the Dublin Volunteers that the real activity of the Nominees 
on the Committee began. 

The cry was now, "Send all the guns to Ulster," and this 
when analysed was found to mean, ''Divide all the guns among 
the elite of the Ulster Nominees." 

From this period the Nominees no longer maintained even 
the pretence of cooperation with the original Committee. 
Insult, abuse, and innuendo became the order of the day. 
Those who opposed the shipment of the rifles secured by the 
Dublin men's efforts were denounced in unmeasured terms. 
Those who suggested that the guns should go to the men who 
had paid in advance for them were howled down. Ulster had 
to be defended from the Carson Army, though, curiously 
enough, its defence was to be conducted with empty rifles. 

Indeed, we might have been convinced of the sincerity of 
this Ulster frenzy had the Nominees in their anxiety not for- 
gotten to demand from the Committee a single round of am- 
munition ! 

However, numbers triumphed, the majority was solid, and 
without a smile they solemnly voted that the guns should not 
go to the men whose money had paid for them, but that all the 
available weapons should be "sold" at 25/- apiece to certain 
of the Ulster Nominees. 

Will it be believed that for these "sales" the "purchasers" 
have not paid to the men who imported the rifles one penny 
of the price to this day? 

No unbiased member of the Committee has any doubt that 
it was also the deliberate intention of at least a section of the 
Nominees, by a studied and well sustained policy, to force the 
resignation of Mac Neill and other members of the original 
Committee. As it is natural to assume that the policy of Mr. 
Redmond's Nominees was the policy of Mr, Redmond, it is in- 
teresting to note that nothing which might have led to the 
disruption of the Committee at this period was neglected. In- 
stances in abundance might be cited to prove this. The at- 
tacks, the accusations, and the insults by which the Nominees 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 226 

hoped to provoke us to resign are all on record, but no useful 
purpose would now be served by recounting them. In the in- 
terests of Irish decency let us hope that their publication will 
never become necessary. 

The only redeeming feature in the recollections of this 
unpleasant period is that there were found amongst the 
Nominees two or three men to whom this campaign of ofifensive- 
ness did not appear to commend itself. 

This state of affairs however meant, of course, the total 
neglect of all constructive work, including the arming of the 
Volunteers, which now was no longer difficult, since the public 
horror at the Bachelors' Walk assassinations had forced the 
British Government to withdraw the Proclamation and to open 
the ports. 

The circumstances that prevented us from purchasing at 
this period twenty times as many rifles as we did purchase were 
either a series of amazing coincidences or were a deliberate 
and damnably efficient plot to keep the men unarmed. 

Without money we couldn't buy arms. The intervention 
of Mr. Redmond had stopped the supply of money from 
America, and of the money that we had already got from 
America, a large sum had been secured by one of Mr. Red- 
mond's adherents, for which, by the way, we have never re- 
ceived either a single gun or an account of its expenditure. 
Practically all the money that we had expected to get from the 
disposal of the Howth and Kilcool guns was, owing to the 
Ulster "sales," withheld from the Committee. Of the money 
that was available for the arming of the Volunteers, by sub- 
scription, Mr. Redmond had privately secured 6,000 pounds, 
one of his colleagues 250 pounds, and so on. 

A subscription of 500 pounds that had been personally 
promised to me and to Eoin Mac Neill was collected, unknown 
to the Committee, by one of the Nominees and sent to Mr. 
Redmond, who persistently withheld Volunteer Funds from the 
Committee even whUe his Nominees, including his brother and 
Mr. Devlin, were sitting upon that Committee. 



226 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

The personal subscriptions of several of Mr. Redmond's 
supporters which had been promised publicly in the Press and 
on the Platform were never paid to us. 

Finally, not a single penny piece reached the Provisional 
Committee either from any of the Nominees or from any of the 
eighty Members of Parliament, who had received from the 
British Treasury during the lifetime of the Provisional Com- 
mittee the sum of 32,000 pounds. 

Was this a coincidence? 

There remained for us — the men who wanted the Volun- 
teers efficiently armed — only the monthly affiliation fees and 
a few other sums that it was impossible to prevent from reach- 
ing us. 

This source of income was the more precarious as the Joint 
Committee was daily authorising expenditure with an enthus- 
iasm that would make the Rothschilds look cheap. 

The organisation that we had successfully run from two 
rooms had now to occupy three different office buildings. Rent 
had to be paid twelve months in advance. It had to maintain 
an expensive Inspection Office, into which there rushed, with 
unseemly haste, innumerable militia officers whose interest in 
the cause of Irish Nationality had not until then been even sus- 
pected. 

Is it any wonder that money to buy arms was scarce? 

On the outbreak of the war Mr. Redmond made his famous 
declaration about our defending the shores of Ireland if the 
British troops were withdrawn. Taken in connection with 
the proviso that accompanied it, the offer seemed reasonable 
enough, none of us quarrelled with it, and the Committee en- 
dorsed it. 

I have heard, by the way, on the best authority that the 
following curious incident occurred when, at this time, the 
mobilisation of the British Army was ordered. Many reser- 
vists and militiamen, principally in Belfast and Derry, decided 
quite spontaneously, to risk a court-martial and not to join the 
colors until Home Rule became a fact as well as an Act. Mr. 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 227 

Redmond, hearing of this, immediately sent to Belfast and 
Derry the Inspector-General and his assistant with orders to 
implore these reservists to join the colors without delay, as 
the action they contemplated would be fatal to Home Rule. 
They obeyed the instruction, and are now mostly in their graves 
in Flanders. Posterity can decide whether it was they or the 
Leader of the Irish Race that displayed most political acumen 
in the crisis of 1914. 

Soon afterwards Mr. Redmond announced the arrival of his 
Italian rifles, of which he had thousands ready for "distri- 
bution," and he made the further remarkable statement that 
the Government would provide the remainder of the Volun- 
teers with arms. 

The Italian rifles are, as far as we can ascertain, for not 
one of them was ever allowed to reach the Committee, similar 
to those which Mr. Baunerman of New York sells retail for 
11.48, and the "distribution" of them was proceeded with, 
without either the knowledge or responsibility of the Commit- 
tee, at the modest rate of one pound sterling per gun. Not a 
single round of ammunition for them is available. 

For the arms which Mr. Redmond said the Government 
would provide for us we are still waiting. 

But Mr. Redmond's dual announcement was not without 
its effect, for it immediately and definitely put an end to all 
public interest in the Arms Fund. 

This may not, of course, have been its intention, but this 
is what it did. However, let us be charitable and assume that 
this was only another of the unhappy coincidences. 

Next the "War Office proposals" came before the Commit- 
tee. There were several of them, and they were complicated; 
but since they are now happily dead, it is not necessary to dis- 
cuss them at length. 

Suffice it that they meant practically handing over the 
organisation, and the men who had trusted us, to the British 
Government as an auxiliary Imperial force. 

Nearly all the original members opposed them in toto, 



228 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

and whatever Mr. Redmond's attitude towards them may have 
been, very few of his Nominees even spoke in their favor. 
Their warmest advocate on the Committee, I think, was a gen- 
tleman who has since obtained a Government appointment with 
a salary of about 1,200 pounds a year. 

As Treasurer of the Volunteers I was considerably wor- 
ried about the lavish expenditure of the Joint Committee, 
coupled as it was with the stoppage of subscriptions, and in 
view of the curious reluctance of certain Nominees to comply 
with my request for an audit of the books, the possibility of an 
intention to bankrupt and so discredit the organisation sug- 
gested itself. 

Some of us determined, therefore, to secure at once at least 
as many rifles as would meet the claims of those companies 
who had sent money to headquarters for them. 

To get authority to do so required some finesse, but it was 
accomplished in this way : Having got the Arms Committee 
together for the purpose of adopting a standard bore, one or 
two of us recommended .303, which is the bore of the British 
Service Rifle. (British Service Rifles, in consequence of the 
War were, then as now, practically unprocurable). .303 bore 
was adopted, and I then enquired of the Committee whether 
we were thereby authorised to purchase any available rifles 
that would take this cartridge, to which the chairman, with 
the consent of the Committee, replied that we were. 

Armed with this authority I went privately to Birming- 
ham and purchased the entire output of a firm of gunsmiths 
who made, specially for our order, a Martini-Enfield .303, a 
very serviceable weapon, which they continued making and 
supplying to us until the Friendly Government raided and 
closed their factory last November. When I reported the Bir- 
mingham trip to the Committee, those of the Nominees who 
were present at both meetings repudiated my action, declared 
it to be entirely unauthorised, and solemnly entered on the 
minutes their protest against my having bought arms with the 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 229 

money sent to the Committee to 'buy arms with. This, at any 
rate, is not the sort of thing that happens by coincidence. 

It was in September, by the way, that we learnt accident- 
ally how one of Mr. Kedmond's supporters had, immediately 
after the withdrawal of the Arms Proclamation, refused, with- 
out even consulting the Committee, the best offer of arms that 
we had ever received. This was a proposal to sell us up to 
29,000 modern magazine rifles with 600 rounds of ammunition 
for each, the price for rifle and ammunition complete being 
only 4 pounds. 

From what I have written, the reader will understand that 
we of the Original Committee had no hallucinations as to the 
possibility of our continuing to co-operate with Mr. Kedmond's 
Nominees. We understood the importance of an unbroken 
front. We were proud that it was the Volunteer Organisation 
that for the first time in centuries had brought together all 
sections of Nationalist Irishmen. We maintained unity as 
long as it was humanly possible to do it. Although Mr. Red- 
mond expressly insisted in making the Volunteers a Party or- 
ganization, we still maintained unity. But we foresaw that a 
cleavage might become inevitable. And Mr. Redmond's Wood- 
enbridge declaration about our double duty was a clear chal- 
lenge on a definite issue. 

We know of only one duty, our duty to Ireland. 

We are Irish Volunteers, not pawns upon the chessboard 
of British Politics. We told Mr. Redmond so, and we ceased 
to admit his Nominees to our Councils. 

And then came the avalanche. An avalanche of vilifica- 
tion, of scurrilous personal attack, and of patent, obvious, and 
grotesque falsehood from every source that would be swayed 
either by Government payment or Castle patronage. 

We, who had hitherto been petted, cajoled, canvassed, 
caressed, wined and dined, we, whose presence on a platform 
was nearly as desirable as that of an M. P., we, whose post- 
bags had heretofore bulged with invitations to the functions of 
the elect, suddenly became nobodies, cranks, frauds, factionists, 



230 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

traitors, disruptionists, pro-Germans, cowards, embezzlers, and 
lunatics. 

At one bound, in fact, we had become bounders ! 

We made no reply to this campaign of personal vilifica- 
tion, nor do we propose to do so. We regret that any group of 
Irishmen should descend to such methods of controversy; but 
as one section has adopted them, we propose that they shall 
have a monopoly of them. 

We put the situation before a Convention of the Volunteers, 
who endorsed our action, and we are now going ahead with the 
work of organising, arming, and training our men. 

Meantime the subsidised Press campaign continues, and is 
made easier since the Friendly Government is suppressing 
every journal that it fails to buy. The kept Press is now en- 
gaged in felon-setting us by name, in pointing us out to the 
Friendly Government as the dangerous men who are opposed 
to benevolent assimilation. Our private correspondence is 
published by "National" papers to prove that we are not suffi- 
ciently devoted to the Imperial idea, and the good work has 
already borne fruit in the opening of our letters, the pilfering 
of our correspondence, the shadowing of our movements, the 
confiscation of our property, and the dismissal, deportation and 
arrest of our associates. Faithful to the tradition of British 
Naval heroism, as expressed in the order "Women and children 
first," the searching of houses in Dublin began with a police 
raid on the residence of a lady. She was threatened with ar- 
rest, her house was searched, papers were ransacked, private 
letters (utterly unconnected with the movement) were ab- 
stracted, and a small quantity of revolvers and ammunition, 
the property of the Irish Volunteers, was seized and con- 
fiscated. 

Many similar, though mostly fruitless, raids have followed, 
but the Irish Press is too busy dealing with the murders in the 
baths to have found space to report them. 

However, our losses have been trifiing, and we are not dis- 
heartened. We are consoled by the fact that the country and 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 231 

the future are with us, and that our men possess real arms and 
ammunition. 

A prostitute Press, a Heaven-sent Leader and a Friendly 
Government are undoubtedly a fairly strong combine; still, it 
will take more than that to break the spirit of the Irish Volun- 
teers. 

40 Herbert Park, 
Dublin, 8th April, 1915. 



P. S. — Since the above was written events have followed 
one another with a rapidity that is almost bewildering. The 
Friendly Government is gone, and has been replaced by Gen- 
eral Friend and the Coalition Ministry, which we are told will 
surely give us Home Rule, although its members include men 
who are pledged to the policy of sending "Home Rule to Hell." 

The Cream of the l!sominees are now ornaments of the 
Westminster Parliament at salaries of 400 pounds a year, and 
several of their colleagues have become British officers, who, 
however, display no more anxiety to go to the front than the 
Carson Army does. 

Some of our most prominent Volunteers have been arrested 
and jailed, and one member of the Committee, a permanent 
invalid, has been given a savage sentence of four months' hard 
labor. I myself have been deported from the Desmond-Coun- 
ties by the "Competent Authority," and Eoin Mac Neill's last 
meeting was attended by fifty police with loaded carbines, all 
of which incidents, though they make piquant copy, are sup- 
pressed by the Demons' Journal. 

The fruitless raids for arms have been less frequent, but 
singularly enough several houses in which arms or Volunteer 
documents might be expected to lie have recently attracted the 
attention of some enterprising burglars. The latest of these 
burglaries has led to the prosecution and conviction of a mem- 



232 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

ber of the Citizen Army on the charge of being in possession of 
a rifle. 

Meanwhile Carson is the Solicitor-General for England, 
which goes to show that whatever may be the deficiencies of 
the defenders of the Realm they possess at least a sense 
of humor. 



July 5th 1915. Ua R. 



PEESIDENT WILSON, FKANCE, AND 
IRELAND 

John X. Regan, M.A. 

PRESIDENT WILSON in his message to the Senate urg- 
ing the adoption of a treaty with France stated the 
following as reasons why it should be ratified : 

"We are bound to France by ties of friendship which we 
have always regarded, and shall always regard, as peculiarly 
sacred. She assisted us to win our freedom as a nation. It is 
seriously to be doubted whether we could have won it without 
her gallant and timely aid. We have recently had the privilege 
of assisting in driving enemies, who were also enemies of the 
world, from her soil; but that does not pay our debt to her. 
Nothing can pay such a debt." 

If Ireland be substituted for France we believe President 
Wilson would have been much closer to historical truth. Is 
there one of these reasons which does not apply, we will not 
say with equal but with greater force and justice and right to 
Ireland? Are not the ties which bind Americans to Ireland 
decidedly, undeniably more sacred? That the classic proof of 
Ireland's unique service both in the winning of our Independ- 
ence and its sustaining has yet to be written we know, but the 
luminous facts of history cannot escape the impartial mind. 

Rev. Dr. Ramsay who, according to the best modem au- 
thorities, wrote the most reliable history of the Revolution that 
had appeared up to his time because he shunted away from the 
old Whig theory blindly aped and copied by many so-called 
historians, and who was himself a participant in the Revolu- 
tion, wrote : 

"The Irish in America with few exceptions, were attracted 



234 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

to Independence, for they had fled from oppressions in their 
native land and could not brook the idea that it should follow 
them." And in his chapter on the Pennsylvania Line: "The 
common soldiers enlisted in that state were for the most part 
natives of Ireland, but though not bound to America by the 
accidental tie of birth they were inferior to none in discipline, 
courage, or attachment to the cause of Independence." 

War-days saw Lafayette's name hung high in our national 
sky as a star to which every grateful American should hitch 
his wagon. It attracted the eye and won the heart of the 
masses. It kindled enthusiasm. It worked like a charm. 
Lafayette? Of course. And everybody hurrahed and cheered. 
A mere glance at the appeals made during the war will reveal 
how often Lafayette's name was repeated, from President Wil- 
son and General Pershing down, in Congress and out of Con- 
gress. It was all the apotheosis of a great name. Administra- 
tion leaders were not slow to grasp the old cheap and easy de- 
vice to lure the many. Historical facts? What knowledge of, 
what time, what care have the multitude for these? Lafayette 
to them was a name rich in romance, shining with a dramatic 
touch. From a pragmatic viewpoint the success of the con- 
jurers was as instant as it was superb. 

No one should subtract one jot from the value of the aid 
Lafayette rendered the American Cause. But surely it was 
one of the ironies of fate that it was while in Metz, Germany, at 
a dinner-party, that Lafayette heard of the revolting colonies 
and determined to throw his fortune in with them. His coming 
when America had few friends anywhere had a fine heartening 
effect upon the struggling colonists. But great soldier he was 
not, and his military career in America though estimable, was 
not extraordinary, and was far from what the political propa- 
gandists made it out to be. Apart from the chivalry displayed 
by his joining the right though the then apparently hopeless 
cause, it is by no means manifest what distinctive service he 
rendered. Certainly it was not indispensable. 

But the relevant, notable fact that merits stress is the one 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 235 

these propagandists politicly dissembled. That fact is that 
Lafayette did not for an instant represent France. To dissuade 
him from coming his friends left no stone unturned. The King 
actually forbade him. Even the American Envoys did not look 
with favor on his coming. When he was about to sail he was 
arrested, but the eager youth fitting out a vessel at his own ex- 
pense surreptitiously reached our shores. So the joke of our 
glorification of France is that the most famous of her sons 
who came to our aid had the official sanction of neither the 
French Monarch, nor of the French Republic nor of the French 
Directory. The French Assembly voted him a traitor, the 
French Directory kept him an exile. Himself alone Lafayette 
represented and his inborn love of liberty ; and all the facts of 
history deny that he represented France. Even of what value 
in a determining sense his services were, is seriously mooted. 

And France herself? No one will deny that during the 
greater part of our struggle she did not lift a finger to aid us. 
Burgoyne had surrendered, the crisis of the American Revolu- 
tion had passed before France moved one step to help the 
colonists. With all due respect to the President's opinion we 
think that history attests the probability of the successful out- 
come of the war even if the belated help of the outsiders had 
failed to arrive. At the eleventh hour assistance was gratefully 
received and did accelerate the achievement of Independence. 
But France's motives were not the noblest ; no feeling of friend- 
ship prompted her action; no chivalrj^ stirred her to strike a 
blow for human freedom — it was chiefly a desire to cripple and 
weaken her old enemy England. Not till after Saratoga and 
the tempting offers of peace by England did France listen to 
Franklin. 

Superior, how enormously superior in quantity and qual- 
ity is the potent aid rendered by Ireland and the sons of Ire- 
land. Her motive was the holy one of human liberty. As 
Washington himself expressed it in his letter to the Irish Pat- 
riots: "Your cause is identical with mine." From the very 
start all Ireland stood by us, sorrowed with us in our defeats 



236 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

and rejoiced with us in our victories, fighting in every battle 
from the first to the last shot on land and on sea. No one will 
dispute the testimony of George Bancroft, the historian, when 
he said in Faneuil Hall: "In the days of the Revolution Ire- 
land was with us to a man." 

Irish blood in the Revolution was the determining factor. 
After twenty years of painstaking research Mr. Michael O'Brien 
in his book, "A Hidden Phase of American History, Ireland's 
Part in America's Struggle for Liberty," establishes unequivo- 
cally that thirty-eight percent of the Revolutionary army that 
won American Independence were Irish. His findings cannot 
be gainsaid because he cites evidence. France came to us at 
the last moment when the tide of battle had turned in our favor. 
Ireland was with us in large numbers, astonishingly large, 
right from the beginning. 

But far more important than this because more essential 
is the fact that it was chiefly the Irish in the colonies who 
aflame with the love of liberty and independence incessantly 
stirred and fanned their sacred embers. As Charles E. Hughes 
remarked in 1908 : 

"... certainly they (the Irish) have contributed the 
yeast of Independence and not only throughout the colonial 
period, but ever since they have furnished that spirit of revolt 
against tyranny and unjust exaction, that insistence upon in- 
dividual rights and equal opportunity, which not only made 
possible the foundings of our institutions, but have preserved 
them in their entirety until this hour." 

There is excellent proof in abundance that distinguished 
Americans at all times in our history have borne testimony to 
the almost incalculable aid Ireland rendered this country 
through her sons. Irishmen were not only eminent among 
those who won our Independence and illustrious on the battle- 
fields where it was sustained, but they were the chief builders 
whose brains and brawn secured for America her unequalled 
national prosperity. It is almost superfluous to remark that 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 237 

neither French blood nor that of any other nation have such a 
record as proud and glorious as it is indisputable. 

Here are a few statements to confirm this assertion. 

General Lewis Cass in 1847 remarked in the Senate : 

"Ireland has strong claims upon the sympathy of the 
United States. There are few of our citizens who have not Irish 
blood in their veins. That country has sent out a large number 
of the immigrants who have added numbers to our population, 
industry and enterprise to our capital, and the other elements 
of power and prosperity. 

"Our population of Irish descent have fought battles of the 
country with as much zeal and bravery as any class of citizens. 
And from the heights of Abraham where Montgomery fell, to 
the walls of Monterey, their blood has been poured out like 
water in defence of liberty." 

Governor Ames of Massachusetts at a great anti-coercion 
meeting in 1887, said: 

'*I bring the sympathy of the Commonwealth because you 
are in sympathy with the traditions of the fathers. The suc- 
cess of the cause of Ireland may not come tomorrow, or this 
year, but its ultimate success in principles of right, of equity 
and justice, is certain." 

General Benjamin Butler at the same meeting read from 
the first report of the Continental Congress in 1775. "There," 
said the speaker, "is the petition of the United Colonies to the 
Irishmen to come over here, and the descendants of those so 
invited, some of them are here before me. On occasions like 
this our forefathers looked forward almost with prophecy. 
When the war came Ireland sent us Montgomery and other 
compatriots who fought in the Revolution. If war should 
come let us pay that class of debt first. God forbid that should 
be, but if it does come may God defend the right. Don't let me 
be understood as wishing for war. But coercion of nations 
must end in war. All history shows that such acts end in 
war, — the great arbiter. One wrong succeeds another until 



238 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

the appeal to arms is all that is left and I think that a man 
had better be killed than to have his brethren starve to death." 

Charles A. Dana, the famous editor of the New York Sun, 
Sit a protest meeting of N. Y. citizens against coercion, said : 

"The question will, perhaps, be asked what business we 
have with the proceedings of the British Parliament towards 
the Irish people and what right we have to put in a voice upon 
the subject. I think our right is unquestioned. We speak in 
the first place in behalf of humanity, in behalf of justice in the 
abstract; in behalf of the rights which belong to men as men 
and which they are about to violate in Ireland in a manner 
unworthy of the middle ages. We speak to you because the 
Irishmen in Ireland are oijr near relations, not merely near to 
us who are home at Plymouth Rock, but near to all Americans ; 
because the Irish Race make up a vast number of the Ameri- 
can people and because they contribute in every way, and have 
contributed to the progress and the power of this country. 
Nor are these the only reasons why we have a right to speak 
on this matter. We have a right because we have contributed 
to maintain the great contest of freedom which Irishmen led by 
Mr. Parnell are now so gallantly fighting. Where is the treas- 
ury of Ireland? It is in the hearts and the pockets of the 
Irishmen of the United States. It is in the hearts of all Ameri- 
cans who sympathise with them and cooperate with them and 
mean to cooperate to the end. If wrong is done in the enact- 
ment of a coercion bill the men to maintain a struggle against 
it will come from here." 

The Bon. George Frisbe Hoar said in Faneuil Hall at a 
pro-Irish meeting: 

"It is appropriate that we should meet here to-night, for 
the two countries are united by the closest ties and owe much 
to each other. The early American patriots, in their effort for 
freedom held up as an argument the similarity of the condi- 
tion between their country and Ireland. And in the Declara- 
tion of Independence is the denunciation of the same acts 
which England is attempting today, the taking of men across 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 239 

the sea for trial — aud iu that arraignment of the Tory Govern- 
ment of England. It is one cause, one aim, that unites the 
oppressed countries. It is as important for England to hear 
the voice of this meeting as it is for Ireland, and if the British 
Empire cannot be maintained without a continuance of eight- 
centuries oppression in Ireland, it ought to go down. Every 
battle fought in our late war testified to the gallantry and 
bravery of the Irish Race and showed whatever his prejudice of 
party the Irishman was true to the flag of his adopted country. 
Whatever heart may be cold, whatever tongue may be silent, 
mine shall never be so in behalf of the Irishmen or their coun- 
try." 

Facts are Facts. France's contribution to American In- 
dependence and American National Development when juxt- 
aposed with Ireland's is quite insignificant. Without France's 
aid we should probably have achieved independence anyway. 
Without Ireland's, we are convinced after an impartial study of 
facts, the American Revolution might never have been fought. 
If we can never repay the debt we owe France it is ten thou- 
sand times more true that we can never repay the debt we owe 
Ireland. Let us begin by recognising the Irish Republic estab- 
lished by the ballot of the Irish Nation. 



THE FLIPPANT HYPHEN 
John X. Regan, M.A. 

^ ^^ If YPHENATED," in certain quarters, is all the 
I — I vogue. Yet what mental sloth or oblique bias its 

-*■ "^ use betrays ! To impugn loyalty it is employed al- 
most like a hand-grenade. Take for instance, Irish-American. 
This, according to good use, the basis of all good style, means an 
American of Irish blood. But an odious cant has attempted to 
twist and distort its meaning serpentinely in a base effort to 
attach odium to the term. Surely nobody but a mere sciolist 
fails to perceive the "hyphen" is a mere quibble. From our 
days of formal logic we all know the function of the quibble, 
tergiversation. In practical life quibbling is the pet toy of 
puerile minds or a decoy set to ensnare the unthinking multi- 
tude. It matters little who it was who invented this mean 
decoy. What does matter is the fortunate fact that words and 
coiners of words make neither men nor Americans — sterling 
worth is still the badge of manhood and Americanism. 

Is there any intellectual honesty in attempting to hood- 
wink people by verbality, by verbal ukase decreeing the 
"hyphenated" un-American? Certainly it is utter verbality to 
allege that you have the thing because you impute a sinister 
meaning to the name. Would it not be more scientific, less 
confusing, more consonant with thought-exactness, which ought 
to manifest itself in precision of expression, to give new names 
directly to new ideas rather than to retain an old name and sur- 
reptitiously introduce a new invidious and unjust meaning? 
Methods employed to confuse have never helped intellectual or 
moral progress. 

Would these modern flippant carpers fling the "hyphen"^ 
at the father of the American Navy? When hailed by a British 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 241 

frigate's challenge, ''What ship is thatf Commodore John 
Barry replied, "The Frigate United States, saucy Jack Barry, 
Commander, half Irishman, half Yankee, — iclio the hell are 
you?" 

Would they find fault with Colonel Johnson, "gallant old 
Tecumseh," as he was called, for paying the following tribute in 
1842 to the Irish, at Lexington, Kentucky : "/ have, mith some 
of you, my fellow-citizens, fought hy the side of the Irishmen 
in the ranks of liberiy, under the Star Spangled Banner, against 
the Christian oppressor, as xcell as the savage foe. I have 
fought under the bird of Jove — the abiding eagle — by the side 
of the sons of the Emerald Isle. I have seen the Irishman fall 
in the ranks, and thank his God that he had one life to give to 
the cause of American freedom, and regret that he had not' 
another life to lose for her sake. I have witnessed many an 
instance of their bravery in the field, and I know this country is 
largely indebted for its liberties to the brave and warm-hearted 
Irish, icho never gave up a post but with their lives — who were 
never in any engagement shot in their backs. I have great con- 
fidence in the Irish people. Blood is the price that is sometimes 
paid for liberty; and if blood is to be shed for that sacred 
cause, there are no men on earth more ready to shed their blood 
at its sacred shrine, than Irishmen." 

Would they find fault with General Winfield Scott who 
said of the Irish under him in the Mexican war, of whom there 
were more than two thousand, "no one ever turned his back 
upon the enemy or faltered in advancing to the charge"? 

Would they censure Col. Thomas W. Higginson for saying 
of John Boyle O'Reilly, "It som,etimes seemed as if centuries 
of oppression, generations of protest against tyranny, were 
concentrated into a single burning paragraph that came from 
his pen. . . . I am not one of those who can criticise a man 
ivho was so good an American for being not merely incidentally 
and occasionally, but steadily and underneath it all, an Irish- 
man also. . . . I never have been among those who believed it 
to be the duty of an Irishman, as soon as he set foot on this 



242 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

soil and looked around for his naturalization papers, to forget 
the wrongs and sorrows he had left behind him. I cannot com- 
plain of Boyle O'Reilly, that through life in his spirit he kept 
the green flag waving heside the Stars and Stripes, any more 
than I can forget the recorded joy of McGlellan in the terrible 
battles of the Peninsula ivhen he saw the green flags borne by 
each regiment in Meagher's Irish Brigade come from the second 
army corps to his relief." 

There were no small-minded cavillers in those days to hurl 
meaningless quibbles at brave Americans of Irish blood. These 
were known as, and called, Irishmen. That their Americanism 
was above reproach, went without saying. Have we lost the 
noble comity of former days ? 



lEELAND, POLITICS, AND CONSCIENCE * 

John X. Regan, M. A. 

RIGHT and wrong, or rather the sense of right and wrong 
is life's pivot. In human history no words transcend in 
importance these two — Right impelling the race to pro- 
gress, Wrong retrograding mankind. These are the everlasting, 
immutable things. Indelibly imprinted on conscience by the 
Creator this law has a vital, essential function in every nook 
and corner of human action, in politics no less than in econom- 
ics, in national affairs no less than in individual conduct. Poli- 
tics, unless moral, is inhuman — he who runs may read this 
truth in the history of evei*y people. 

Every day one reads or hears about the cause of Ireland's 
Independence. But what does this word CAUSE mean? Not 
only does it denote the political, but it also connotes the human 
emancipation of Ireland. But arresting stress I wish to lay on 
an aspect which is frequently ignored, unfortunately over- 
looked, or but vaguely alluded to by statesmen and critics alike 
— so torpid in the matter has become the political conscience — 
and that is the ethical aspect, — the signal, reverence-compel- 
ling fact that Ireland's cause is a great, sacred, ineluctably 
ethical struggle, a struggle supported by moral reasons and mo- 
tives which their fathers have maintained for centuries and 
which Irishmen today are fast completing — a struggle urged, 
levered and impetused by conscience, a struggle rooted and 
grounded in the eternal principles of right. 

The Rebel, the inexpugnably certain rebel against right, 
has been, is, England — the British "Government" — what 
Mitchel termed, the English Thing ; Ireland has been, is, the im- 



*(This article appeared last year in "Old Ireland," published in 
Dublin.) 



244 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

placably zealous champion of right. That, briefly, is the truth. 
That, tersely, is Ireland's history. Correct thinking is a power- 
ful searchlight that reveals facts. Who seriously calls Irish- 
men "rebels" or describes their conflicts with wrong as "rebel- 
lions" is stark dead, intellectually. In justice, let us give things 
their proper names — in the interest of truth let us think for 
ourselves, independently of error and cant. 

Nor have I, nor should I have — who should ? — any patience 
with those who speak of or write on Irish history as "gloomy, 
dull, distressful." These are the terms of the enemy or reflect 
his psychology, terms at variance with the facts, terms of the 
wrong-doer, of those who aid and abet the English Thing. For 
can any struggle merit greater praise, can any struggle be 
more gallant, more glorious, more heroic, can any struggle 
shine with more splendid lustre of nobility than the struggle of 
Right against Wrong? That struggle is the conflict of Ireland 
with England. England is wrong, Ireland is right. 

I have just returned after almost a year's sojourn in Ire- 
land. From the privilege of contact with many of the leaders 
of the Irish Republic, the rank and file of the Volunteers, the 
Cuman na mBan, and the people in general — one impression 
remains pre-eminent above all others and that is the Irish peo- 
ple's inflexible determination to maintain their fight for their 
country's independence at all costs, because, as they said, "in 
conscience we are bound to sustain our own government which 
the majority of our fellow-countrymen voted for and estab- 
lished." 

The people of Ireland today are conducting the struggle 
with holier intensity than ever, I think, against alien, military 
rule, not merely because it is oppressive rule but especially be- 
cause it is rule by foreigners. On their side the Irish people 
know that they have right and justice, that the English are 
wrong and unjust. By God's Providence this cause of Ireland 
is simple. Like all the chief obligations of life, the child can 
understand it and the sage. Time and time again with energetic 
iterancy this thesis was demonstrated for me in all parts of Ire- 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 245 

land, not always in the same terms, but invariably with the 
identical content. "This cause of our country's Independence 
is a sacred matter, is de sua natura, essentially ethical, a sub- 
ject involving obligation on the part of every Irish man and 
woman, a matter of Eight and Wrong, an inescapable obliga- 
tion.'" 

One indeed brushes elbow occasionally with the apparently 
indifferent or supine in Ireland, individuals who are uncon- 
cerned, even tell you so, ply their trade, and ostensibly tend 
their religious duties in passive acquiescence of the foreign 
military occupation of their country. But these are a negligible 
few. The pretext upon which these indifferent people fall back 
is tantamount to an absolute denial of the essentially ethical 
element in politics — they lean upon the reed of a sophistry in 
their tacid surrender of their very rights as human beings as 
well as in their neglect of their duties — theirs is a sinful ac- 
quiescence in the invasion of human liberty. For they are citi- 
zens of the Irish Republic to which alone they owe allegiance, 
in wliich they are bound to fulfil their political duties. They 
allege that they are not "interested in politics," that they are 
not "politicians." If by "politics" they mean vote-catching, 
graft, nnscrupulosity, favoritism, mean and petty ambition, 
lust for self and power, trimming, and the flouting of every 
moral principle; if by "politicians" they mean that shallow, 
turpid tribe of corrupt, venal degenerates, and all the other 
sinister things which undoubtedly attach to the words in mod- 
ern times, neither their fellow-countrymen nor conscience, it 
is almost needless to remark, could require them to take part 
in any such sordid business. It smacks of hell — of all things 
evil. Here is one of the instances where a noble word has been 
dragged down by human depravity into the mire of sinful asso- 
ciation. 

But politics has a noble sense, a true sense, a human 
sense. Politics, properly speaking, should be and is considered 
by all honest men, a branch of ethics — the science of natural 
morality indicating what action is right, and what is wrong, 



246 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

as befitting or imbefitting a rational creature. And in these 
days of turmoil and confusion in the world, too serious, too 
solemn reflection can hardly be had on the obligations we all 
have in politics. Fogginess and misconception as regards 
politics, its nature and obligations seem to be everywhere in 
the world rampant. Men seem not to realize that politics is 
one of the chief chapters in the philosophy of life, of Right. 

Many friends of Ireland hate the Evil Thing of alien mili- 
tary rule, ( I insist upon the fact of military alien rule because 
in Ireland today any impartial observer knows that England 
is functioning there only as a military machine, behind barbed 
wire entanglements in Dublin Castle and in Phoenix Park and 
in her army encampments entrenched in different parts of Ire- 
land — as a foreign government England has ceased to function 
in Ireland) — more from instinct than from principle. Correct 
though this instinct is, their influence would be far more potent 
if this instinct were shown to be supported by principle. 

Man, by his very nature, is an ethical animal, that is, a 
rational animal, bound to do what is right. But man is equally 
a political animal, that is, he must live in civil society. This 
is the ethically inescapable condition of human existence. Citi- 
zens with duties to our country we are all by God's ordination. 
Our ethical responsibilities we may shirk, but we cannot evade 
with impunity our obligations in civil society, our duties poli- 
tical. 

Philosoph}' teaches that the necessities of existence make 
men political. And the complexity of modern existence ac- 
centuates the importance of our political duties. 

The end, the purpose of civil society, is not mere existence 
— it is existence in accordance with man's highest and distinc- 
tive attribute — Eeason. Aristotle pointedly insisted that the 
State is formed that men may live, but exists that they may live 
nobly. 

What is the State? The State, the body politic, is a society 
of free men. The governing by the State, i. e., the constitu- 
tional (political or civil) government is a government of free 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 247 

men and equals. Or, to put it in another way, the State is a 
political community organized into a distinctive government 
by the people themselves, recognized by the people, existing 
and functioning by the consent of the people, for the sake of 
the people. Hence the State exists for the sake of the people, 
not the people for the State. 

Justice — Eight is the true foundation of the State — jus- 
titia fundamentum regni. There can be no justice, no right 
where there is not the explicit, voluntary consent of the com- 
munity — that is essential. 

That Empires are States, one should, of course, strictly 
speaking, deny. For all empires were founded and are sus- 
tained not on Right, but Wrong, not on Right but Might. The 
only government which merits the title is that whose basis is 
ethical, whose foundation is Right and Justice, whose title to 
sovereignty is the consent of the people. Empires rest not on 
the adamantine rock of Law, of Justice, of Right, — hence merit 
not the title of States. An empire is not a State, but a gang 
of robbers, not built on Law, but on Anarchy, not on Right, but 
the sword. Empire statesmen and empire builders are the 
rebels of history; those who rise up to resist them are the 
world's true and noble men. The very word patriotism, love 
of one's native land, is out of joint with what is called empire- 
citizenship. The verj^ word empire connotes might, not right. 
The story of P^mpires is a history of blood, repression, suppres- 
sion, colonisation, hangings, tortures, assassinations, reform 
bills, coercion bills, crime acts, final settlements, questions and 
problems, government without the consent of the governed, in 
a word, a story of wrong. 

Read the theories of government of Imperialists, read their 
"solemn humbug," read their "vast, unconscious hypocrisy," — 
nowhere will you find any trace of the ethical basis, but every- 
where the scouting of right. In expounding their empire-sover- 
eignty, when they come to the heart of things, there is not even 
the pretence of Right. Lord Thring says : "The means by which 
the possessions of Great Britain were acquired have been as 



248 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

various as the possessions themselves. What is the link which 
fastens each of these possessions to the mother country? The 
inherent and indestructible right to exercise Imperial powers 
— in other words, the Supremacy of the Crown and the British 
Parliament. What, again, is the common bond of union be- 
tween these vast Colonial possessions, differing in laws, in 
religion, and in the character of the population? The same 
answer must be given, namely, the sovereignty of Great Bri- 
tain. The mode in which the materials comjiosing the British 
Empire have been cemented together is exactly the reverse of 
the manner of the construction of the American Union. In the 
case of the American Union, Independent States voluntarily 
relinquished a portion of their Sovereignty to secure national 
unity. 

The progress and diffusion of true democracy have resulted 
in "Empires going with a vengeance." Only two of these poli- 
tical monstrosities survive, Britain and Japan. And they are 
not wanting eminent thinkers who predict their imminent dis- 
ruption. 

As a profound student of government wrote: "Coercion 
may enforce subject, as it may enforce cohabitation, but it does 
not create the natural bond without the natural title. You 
may make a plantation of slaves and call it a realm; but you 
cannot have a body politic to rule, nor authority to rule over 
one, except you have the foundation of consent." (The Rev. 
Charles B. Macksey, S.J., in "Sovereignty and Consent," 
p. 25.) 

The primarj'^ end of the State, the chief purpose and reason 
of its existence is the community's common weal or general wel- 
fare. This "end of civil society does not properly belong to any 
individual person, or individual groups of persons in preference 
to others in the community, but to the community as such, to 
the people as a body politic, a moral person." (idem, p. 20.) To 
accomplish this end the State must protect the rights of persons 
and properties. 

That every man has an indefeasible right to live out his 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 249 

own life, and has an indefeasible right to what is requisite to 
enable him to do so, is indisputable. So also the associations 
of men, formed by their common consent, possess the same in- 
defeasible rights. Civil, political society is as natural as the 
family; man's innate tendencies are equally strong towards it; 
it is equally necessary for God's full plan ; it carries a like ob- 
ligation upon mankind to establish it; its essential elements, 
juridical as well as others, are prescribed by the natural law. 
Just as the primary right of every man is to existence, so the 
primary right of the State (a people, a nation) is to be, qua 
talis, is to existence, qua State (or nation). Further the right 
of the State, set up by the free choice of a free people (no other 
State is or can be lawful) is not merely to existence, but to 
complete existence, noble and worthy existence, an existence in 
accordance with the dignity of human nature. 

This right Imperialists deny on the supercilious, unethical, 
unjust, and inhuman pretext that they can rule any people bet- 
ter than they can govern themselves. Abraham Lincoln spoke 
the truth when he said that Almighty God never made one peo- 
ple good enough to rule over another people. Political slavery 
is the monstrous offspring of imperialism, a policy conceived 
and executed in wrong. In the last analysis imperialism is a 
despotic infringement of human freedom itself. 

The question is being asked today whether representative 
government is not a failure. Paternalism, maladministration 
and graft are not so much the objects of attack as representa- 
tive government itself. This, of course, is a mistake. The 
real root of this deplorable state of affairs is the neglect of the 
electorate properly to fulfill their duties by keeping in touch 
with politics. Many acute observers declare that this shirking 
of political duty may spell the ruin of representative govern- 
ment. The consequences of citizens omitting to vote, voting in- 
discriminately, or for selfish purposes, and neglecting to keep 
a watchful eye on governmental performance, are large and 
menacing. 

There are some people who fancy that the Ii'ish people 



2 50 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

should give over their struggle for separation because it is 
costing so much suffering, so much material loss. The critics 
are ignorant of the intense spiritual character of the Irish peo- 
ple, of their devotion to principle. Irishmen realize that the 
essential ohligation and rights of Irish citizenship are not the 
arbitrary choice of Irishmen but are determined, as in every 
true State, by the natural purposes and exigencies of civic 
coalesence. 'The civic bond, like the marriage bond, is a defin- 
ite, specific compound of obligations and rights. As in mar- 
riage, the binding force of this bond also comes from God 
through the natural law. This bond is actuated in the concrete 
by the consent of the citizens. In a word, the one substantial 
thing in the establishment of a State, as of a family, in joining 
a civic unit together with the civic bond as in joining a family 
unit with a marriage bond, is the voluntary and free consent 
of those who establish the union." (Idem, p. 17.) 

Some one has said that the true thermometer of civilization 
is the keen feeling and perception of what is Eight and Wrong. 
For what else does civilization mean? Civilization is the fine 
and practical perception of all the rights and duties involved in 
citizenship having in their far-reaching ramifications their 
start and finish in God. Eminence in character of men and 
society — advance up the hill of perfection — the virtues of 
Faith, Hope and Charity and their concomitant fruits, happi- 
ness, nobleness and wisdom — this is civilization. The genuine 
greatness of men and of nations consist of this eminence, this 
progress, these spiritual qualities. The roots of human pro- 
gress, whence blossom the grace and beauty of life, true suc- 
cess and power, are probity, honor, the denial of self, and sus- 
ceptibility to the sweet and elevating influences of high ideals. 
These are essential to what Aristotle called (more than 2,300 
years ago his voice rang out — ah, the startling lack of human 
progress), ''the good life," the perfection of life — the noble 
and worthy existence of the State, the body politic, civil so- 
ciety. 

Measured by this criterion, this thermometer of civiliza- 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 251 

tion, I know of no people whose national character registers a 
higher degree of historical virtue and of humanity than the 
Irish character. The longanimity of the people, the splendid 
list Ireland possesses of martyrs for her sacrosanct champion- 
ship of Eight against Wrong, martyrs whose lives were emi- 
nently noble and crowned with an heroic death — all these are 
the true tokens of civilization and rise above and outlive the 
empty pride and pomp and glory of the mightiest Empire. 

Irishmen's ideals have been and are today, high, severe, yes, 
even ascetic — their common life has been distinguishd by a dig- 
nity, magnanimity and virility — however mean and deplorable 
are the exceptions to the standard commonly cherished and 
practised. These are the happy ideals that brought the smile 
to Pearse's countenance as he joyfully faced death,* that made 
Mac Swiney exclaim : — 

Thou wilt be dead tomorrow. — Nay, tomorrow 
The land will be awake. What recks it then 
Who will be dead, or I or anyone 
Amongst us who must fall ? The land will live. 

The radiant and fragrant beauty of this civilization shin- 
ing in her centuried conflict for Kight against Wrong — that is 
the outstanding meaning and nobility of Ireland's cause. In 
Ireland there is a notable stressing of ethical values. Hence I 
found the conviction so prevalent among Irishmen that nobody 
whose conscience was awake and active could escape the moral 
obligation of energetic and whole-hearted activity in behalf of 
the Republic, because, as they insisted, the struggle is ethical, 
supported and impelled by motives of conscience. 

Under the most narrowing oppression, the most diabolical 
injustice, we behold patience without weakness, humility with- 
out pusillanimity, fearlessness without pride, all crowned with 
the pearl beyond price, the unswerving and unflinching deter- 
mination to spurn the gain of the whole world rather than suf- 



*(As Fr. Aloysius, who attended Pearse to the end. told me.) 



252 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

fer the loss of her national soul — this is Ireland's story — this 
Ireland's history, a conflict of Ireland's Right with England's 
Wrong. Let come what may, while conscience lasts this con- 
flict shall endure. 

More fundamentally than day from night, than light from 
darkness — aye, toto caelo, the Irish mind differs from the 
British. Temper, instinct, principle, vision, I include in mind, 
and the broad psychology of life. Spiritual, catholic, gen- 
erous, refined, faithful, robust, tender — this is the Irish mind. 
And the very antonyms of these words best describe the 
British mind — material, insular, selfish, gross, perfidious, ef- 
feminate and cruel. Ever since the days of Elizabeth it has 
permitted itself to be ruled by the intellectual and moral cecity 
of the Cecils. Today the ethical limpness, not to say corrup- 
tion, of the British mind is manifest in the prevailing idolatry 
of physical comfort, of sensuous gratification, and of luxurious 
living. The worse than Pagan ethics of the English Chancellor 
reflecting the British mind is evident from his words in sup- 
port of divorce : ''The principle that marriage was indissoluble 
disappeared by almost universal admission from our institu- 
tions 359 years ago. We, therefore, today approach the ques- 
tion on the basis that marriage was not, and is not, to be 
treated as indissoluble. Those who took the other view did not 
live in this world, and their arguments were the whisperings 
of the abandoned superstitions of the Middle Ages." 

I should like to believe that none of us Irish have been in 
the least degree contaminated by the pernicious doctrine of 
English political writers and political economists, to whom 
right and wrong, justice and injustice are purely the result of 
human convention, who allege that the ''feeling of moral obli- 
gation" comes from the accumulated experience of ages 
— that inbred selfishness, plus the fear of' the police- 
man {here is the British condonation of their entire empire sys- 
tern, its orientation and its defence), is the account of "the 
sense of duty or moral obligation." The British mind, I mean 
as it has shown itself in political science and political prac- 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 253 

tice, measures all good by the standard of pleasure or utility. 
Its superciliousness impels it to ignore, as it does, that pro- 
found distinction of the school men between Right and Enjoy- 
ment. 

The British mind does not understand man to be an "ethi- 
cal animal, having perception of justice and injustice, of right 
and wrong." It fails to recognize the objective element in 
morality. The bewitchery of trifles, the spirit of wordliness 
blind the British mind so that it does not see that the idea of 
duty ditfers by the whole diameter of existence from the con- 
cept of agreeable feeling. Do not the whole cast of British 
political notions and the entire range of their political practice 
scorn all sound ethics and believe that right is something 
created by human experience — that right may exist by the sheer 
exercise of might? Just as certainly as right and wrong are 
irreconcilable and stand at opposite poles apart, the Irish mind 
differs radicaUy from the British. 

AVrong is the British mind, utterly wrong on the all vital 
subjects of political science and practice. This signal fact 
should not be overlooked in the consideration of Ireland's 
cause. "From their fruits ye shall know them," said our 
Blessed Savior. British mentality makes the State rest on 
utility — considers the primary end of government to be the pro- 
tection of the persons and property of men. All sound ethics 
are rejected. English politicians are afflicted with a logoneur- 
osis in their conjuring with the sacred words, freedom, democ- 
racy, self-government — for they have done all that they could 
to empty the words of their rightful meaning. The ''freedom'' 
of imperialists concedes to their political slaves anything ex- 
cept any impeding or clogging of the omnipotent wheels of all- 
sovereign imperia I ism. 

Right, profoundly, indisputably right, is the Irish mind in 
its political and human philosophy. The Irish mind knows 
that the primary end of the State is not to protect the persons 
and property of men, but to protect the Right of the persons 
and property of men. For the Irish realize that the State is a 



254 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

moral person, an ethical organism made up in the aggregate 
of moral persons. The Gaelic mind knows that the State is as 
essential to human existence as the family, and equally involves 
obligation for its institution and maintenance; that the State, 
nation, people, is a natural unit, that it is a juridical social unit 
whose elements are held together by a civic hond, embodying 
all the essential obligations of cooperation, and all the essential 
rights of social protection and opportunity (Idem, passim) — 
the Gaelic mind perceives that these essential obligations and 
rights are not the arbitrary choice of men, but that they are de- 
termined by the natural purposes and exigencies of human life 
as ordained by God; finally the Gaelic mind knows that "the 
one substantial thing in the establishment of a State, as of a 
family, in joining a civic unit together with tlie civic bond as 
in joining the family unit with the marriage bond, is the vol- 
untary and free consent of those who establish the union, the 
State." 

Again, Irish mentality is acutely aware that these political 
principles are vital and of supreme importance because they 
are ethical, that they enter into the very marrow of spiritual 
life, that there can be no impunitive evasion or omission of 
their obligations, that Right, Conscience, is at the bottom of 
all true political existence, and that upon the knowledge ond 
practice of this right depends the true life, the spiritual life 
and death of nations. The Gaelic mind knows that Right is 
eternal and everlasting, an immutable idea, an essential part 
of the Divine economy. 

To say that the British political conscience is dull and 
callous is to put it mildly. All the signs by which one can 
form a judgment go to prove that it shall not awake until Bri- 
tain bites the dust and wears sackcloth. British political eyes 
are blind to principle, to Right and Wrong. Is not the truth 
of that written clear and large over their far-flung empire of 
wrong? In fact there are no first principles in English politics, 
or last principles — there are no principles at all — and no laws 
giving expression to principles — the whole governmental struc- 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 255 

ture and policy are a mere matter of expediency, utility, con- 
vention, all revolving round the centre — self-interest. In the 
late fifties Lord Salisbury' blurted out the truth when he said 
that in English politics ''no one acts on principle or reasons 
from them." Disraeli wrote to Bulwpr Lytton : "Damn your 
principles! Stick to your party." (Think of it, even his Eng- 
lish principles.) 

Wolf Tone defined Irish freedom as "The Rights of man in 
Ireland." Padraic Pearse declared that "true political inde- 
pendence requires spiritual and intellectual independence as its 
basis, or it tends to become unstable, a thing resting merely on 
interests which change with time and circumstances." Irish 
patriots invariably insist on the essentially ethical character 
of their struggle. Professor O'Rahilly cites St. Thomas to 
prove that men are bound under pain of sin to rise up and over- 
throw the 'usurper, — "If men have both a just cause, and the 
power and if the common good does not suffer, they would be 
right in promoting sedition, and they would sin if they did not 
do so. (Politics, vi)" Again, — "When anyone seizes by force 
on the government, against the will or with the forced consent 
of the subjects, and when recourse cannot be had to a superior 
for a decision as to the usurper, then the man who, in order to 
free his country, slays the tyrant, deserves praise and reward." 
(Sent., d. 44, q. 2, a. 2.) 

Let me point out the striking applicability of St. Thomas's 
conditions to Ireland. The justice of Ireland's cause is evident 
to anyone who knows the true nature of government and the 
true end and purpose of the State. To the Irish mind it has 
ever been so vivid and precious a truth that men have died for 
it in every generation, and the whole nation has suffered in- 
describably, and is suffering unspeakable outrages to sustain 
the Republic of Ireland which has been established and for 
which they will die rather than disown. 

Have Irishmen the power? Ab esse ad posse valet illatio 
— from what has been done to what can be done, the inference 
is valid. Already the Irish people have evinced their capacity 



256 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

by establishing the Republic, and every day are vindicating by 
way of further corroborative proof their ability by sustaining 
it despite all the wiles and odds of might and brute force. 

That the common good will not suffer is manifest from the 
enormous good the Republic is doing for the Irish people. One 
of the very practical demonstrations both of the force and ad- 
vantage of native government over foreign rule is had in the 
number of estates that are being purchased by combinations of 
the people under the direction of the Republican government. 
Independent of the red-tape and invidious favoritism of British 
officialism the people are securing advances through a bank, 
and very expeditiously the lands are passing into the hands of 
the people. That is an instance of the powei" of the de facto and 
the de jure government, that is one of the ways the Republic is 
functioning. Now contrast this Republican performance with 
the slow and bureaucratic malversation of the usurpers. In 
the 25th ^'Report of the Congested Districts Board for Ireland" 
we have their incompetence written by themselves so plainly 
that he who runs may read : — 

Acres 

Lands purchased from 1891 to 1917 2,257,515 

Lands resold from 1891 to 1917 539,340 

Lands in hands of C. D. B 1,718,175 

Why had these 1,718,175 acres not been resold? Why had 
the C. D. B. kept them still in their hands? This greater bulk 
of the acres which they had purchased the C. D. B. were re- 
taining on their hands, one may very reasonably presume, for 
plantation and other exploitation purposes. The validity of 
this presumption readily appears to anyone who read the policy 
as a<lumbrated by Carson a short time ago when he advocated 
that Connacht lands should be parcelled out to soldiers. Car- 
son is the modern Cromwell. 

The Republican courts are functioning throughout the 
greater part of the country and with extraordinary efficiency. 
Even the London Times last May was constrained to admit that 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 257 

in Ireland ''The King's writ runs nowhere save in armored 
cars." The decision rendered in the following case speaks for 
itself. Two brothers were disputing the division of property 
left them by their father. The court's decision was for one of 
them to divide the land into equal halves and for the other to 
take his choice. For speed and justice these courts are inferior 
to none. 

There is no stand-at-a-distance attitude possible for an 
honest man, for a citizen of an}'^ country, in regard to politics. 
Neither clergyman nor laj'man can shirk his political duties 
without guilt. And the guilt is grave because of its far-reach- 
ing consequences. Not only rights do citizens possess in 
politics but also duties. These are solemn obligations of con- 
science which have been wont to be shunted and shifted to the 
shoulders of others, to the degradation of manhood and the 
destruction of representative government. Though probably 
the most insidious and pernicious peril of the age, yet through 
inadvertence, irresponsibility and sloppy thinking, this neglect 
of political duties goes on apace. Everybody seems to believe, 
at least in practice, in an all but absolutely vicarious character 
of politics. Or they will whine over the "hopelessness" or 
"rottenness" of politics as if that exempted them from the 
dictates of right and conscience. Much as I might like to, I 
cannot shuffle off my duties as a political animal. At bottom 
politics is a matter of conscience. 

I think that it would make for the progress of mankind, of 
manhood, for the peace of the world, if this simple, true but 
momentous truth were kept before the eyes of the people, of 
citizens, the fact that politics is of its very essence an ethical 
matter, a branch of ethics, that at the basis of politics national 
and international lies the question of what is right. 

The Irish people understand their rights as citizens of 
their own country and their duties to support their Republic, 
duties rooted in conscience. The Irish nation knows its goal — 
complete separation from everything British. The alien Thing 
is in a state of panic and frenzy. Ireland is cool and deter- 



258 WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN 

mined. What is to prevent Ireland from reaching her goal? 
Guns? Tanks? Bayonets? Lloyd George's pack of murder- 
ers? All these are mortal, passing things, and engines of hu- 
man depravity, the agents of British rebellion against Right, 
against God. Irishmen will continue to follow the high ex- 
ample of their Fathers and ever look at the matter from the 
point of Justice, of Duty, of Principle, of Conscience. For 
principle is the strongest and most indestructible thing in the 
world. 



GENERAL INDEX 



Absenteeism, (cf. Landlords), 191-195. 
America, aid to I., 62. 

Belgium, 222. 

Capitalists, and government, 76. 
Catholic, clergy and British Statesmen, 

180; clergy, castration of, proposed, 

114. 
Civilization, defect of I., viii. 
Consent, (cf. Sovereignty), and right in 

land, 86. 
Constitutionalism, 161-162. 

Davis, on England's refusal to yield, 31 ; 
for force, 68; l.'s foreign policy, 63; 
I. nation, 63-64; political thought, 61, 
63; on Tone, 61 ; appraised by Pearse, 
70-71; and Mitchel contrasted, 92; 
and Tone contrasted, 61, 64, 70, 77. 

Debt, I. and British, 185-186. 

Democracy, freedom and, 69; Pearse 
on. 74-76. 

Devlin, Anne, 102. 110-111. 

Difficulties, of Emmet and Pearse, 1 10. 

Divide et impera, (cf. Religious animos- 
ity), 178-180. 

Duffy, 29. 

Education, I. conception of, 120-124; 
object of, 114, 117, 121, 155-158; 
freedom in, 117, 126-129; English in 
I. 113-119; modern, 120; national 
factor in, 131 ; religion essential in, 
130; necessity of inspiration in, 124, 
130-133. 

Emmet, eulogy of, 103, 109; and I. of 
1914, 101; practical, 51; and Tone, 
29; epitaph, 103. 

Empire, (cf. Imperialism, and nation 
contrasted, 77. 

England, and France contrasted, 64; and 
Mitchel, 79-81; and peace, 107; cal- 
umny of Irish by, 209; the enemy, 64; 
the faith of. 207; foments dissension. 
172, 178-180; generosity of. 186-187; 



Pearse's indictment of, 158; Griffith's 
indictment of, 214; Mac Weill's in- 
dictment of, 187, 191 ; and moral 
force, 32, 81 ; source of evils in I. 
(cf. I.); vulnerable in I., 45; ruined 
I., why, 188-191; resists 1. indepen- 
dence, why, 48; yields only to neces- 
sity, 28, 31. 
English, attitude in O'Connell's lime, 
165, 180; attitude today, 188-189; 
crimes, 113, 187-188; Catholics and 
Ireland (Shrewsbury) ; language, Da- 
vis on, 64. 

Faction, and majority, 162. 

Famine, part of English polity, 113; 
with abundant harvests as Tribute, 
196; results of, 201. 

Federalism, O'Connell rejected, 66-67. 

Fenianism, 92. 

Fenians, 25-26, 160. 

Fianna, 112, 131. 

Fighting, nobility of, 1 18. 

Force, (cf . Davis) ; Lalor and moral, 
81 ; nationhood and, 106; necessity 
of, 68; national spirit and, 161 ; right 
and, 170. 

France, and England contrasted, 64. 

Freedom, basis of I. claim to, 42-43, 47, 
52; material basis of, 73, 80; char- 
acter of idea of, 19; I. conception of, 
19-20; I. definition of, 35; democracy 
and I., 69; I., impossible without 
bloodshed, 68; I., valuation of, 20; 
national sovereignty and national, 52, 
73; nationality and, 56; necessity of, 
159; nation and physical, 72; object 
of, 52, 73; spiritual necessity of, 18; 
Tone's definition of, 42-43 ; national, 
where truth of found, 36. 

French Revolution, Clergy and, 162. 

Gael, temperament of, 148-149. 
Gaelic League. 92. 99, 111. 
Genius. Pearse on. 70. 
Grattan, and Tone contrasted, 61 ; con- 
stitution of, 185. 



GENERAL INDEX 



Hale, and nationality, 89; Irish not 

apostles of, 107; a sacred thing, 143. 
Heroes, calibre of, 101; debt to, 101; 

destiny of, 97. 
History, essence of I., 17; summary of 

I., 22-25; synthesis of modern I., 92- 

93. 

Home Rule (cf . Parliamentarians) ; 
Grattan's Parliament and, 1 76 ; Em- 
met, Tone and, 107. 

Imperialism (cf. Empire); English, 189; 
patriotism and, 190, 204. 

Independence, definition, 56; kinds, 
meaning, 54; national, and sovereign- 
ly, 72. 

Industries (cf . Manufactures) ; printing, 
gold, silver, 198. 

Ireland, a nation defined, 92; as nation 
described, 64; character of demand 
by, 21 ; condition of, eve of Easter 
Week, 115; depopulation of, and 
cause, 208-210; evils in I. and source, 
30, 43, 181; foreign policy for, 63; 
Great War and, 139-140, 150; prog- 
ress after 1782 to Union, 174-177; 
robbery of, 186-188; economic ruin 
of, 191; soul and mind of, 55; stand- 
ardising in, 199; state of, when Union 
was discussed, 172-173; comparative 
statistics of population, 210-21 1 ; polit- 
ical and spiritual unity of, 57. 

Irreconcilables, 59. 

Lalor, aim, 81 ; democratic principles of, 
83; described and appraised, 72-93; 
essence of leaching, 80; I.'s case ac- 
cording to, 87-88; I. and, 82-84; 
Mitchel and. 88-89; Repeal and. 79- 
80. 

Land, (cf . Property, Consent) ; purchase 
and imperial "loans," 187. 

Landlords, (cf . Absenteeism) ; blood ex- 
tortion and, 192-193. 

Language, nationality and, 56; national 
mind and, 121; value to people of 
native. 56. 

Leaders, people and, 87. 

Literature, uniqueness of Gaelic, 148. 

"Loans" to I., 186-187. 

Loyalty, Irish, 108, 178. 

Mac Neill, on English "education" in I., 
115; on Great War, 204. 



Majority, (cf. Faction) 

Manufactures, (cf. Industries), 196-199. 

Meagher. 29. 

Mitchel. aim, 67; character, 88-89; 
Davis and, 92; hate of English 
"thing," 91 ; Lalor's influence on, 88- 
89; on revolution, 90. 

Modern progress. Pearse on. 120-121. 

Modernism, Pearse against, 120-121. 

Nation, defined, 52. 57. 77, 99; duty 
and right of, 183; empire and, con- 
trasted, 77; government and, 75; Irish 
conception of, 18-19, 26-27; meaning 
to Davis, 62-63; natural division. 77; 
physically. 74; spiritually. 56. 

National, independence and sovereignty, 
72; soul and mind. 55; spirit and 
force, 161. 

Nationality, antiquity of Irish, ix-x. 20; 
a spirituality, 56; connotes civiliza- 
tion, 57; defined. 18; empire and 
Irish, 106; freedom and Irish, dis- 
criminated, 56; hate and, 89; Irish 
mind on, 20; Irish, defined, 61 ; inde- 
structible, 106-107; Icinguage and, 64; 
objections to, 64; tribute to. 109; true. 
55; truth of nation's, where found. 36. 

Nationalism, humanism and true. 69; 
Irish, all implicit in Tone, 31, 99; 
philosophy of Irish, 99; the people 
and, 77-78. 

Nationhood, defined, 56; force and, 106; 
indefeasible, 21. 42; nationality and, 
65-66, 72; truth and meaning of 
Irish, 92-93. 

Newman, Cardinal, and Ireland's fu- 
ture, 152. 

O'Connell, appraised by Pearse, 27; 
constitutionalism, 161-162; federalism, 
66; Lalor on, 81; poHtical principles, 
163; Redmond and, contrasted, 67; 
separation and, 181 ; on Union, 167- 

174. 

Oppression, (cf. England sub indict- 
ment) ; instruments of, analyzed, 41 ; 
result of profound polity, 113; results 
of. 198-201. 

Parliamentarians, 1 782 and, 1 74- 1 75 ; al- 
titude of, towards Volunteers. 218- 
219; characterized by Pearse, 17, 21- 



GENERAL INDEX 



22, 29; O'Connell and, contrasted, 
163, 177, 182; reason for national de- 
generacy of, 108. 

Parnell, described by Pearse, 27, 29. 

Patriotism, duly and virtue, 49, 204; 
faith and service, 100-101; Irish, 109. 

Pearse, force and nationhood, 106; high 
ideals in education, 130; prophecy of, 
105-106; on democracy, 75-76. 

People, common repository of Irish tra- 
dition, 78; Lalor on sovereign, 80-81 ; 
fidelity of, 87; nationalism and, 77; 
sovereignty and, 76. 

Pitt, policy of, 178. 

Poor Law system, 199. 

Population (cf. Ireland) ; economics and, 
202-203. 

Press, Irish, 215. 

Problems, all human, solved, 121. 

Property, Lalor and right to private, 83- 
86; right to private property, 74-75. 

Rebellion, misnomer, 102. 

Redmond, crime of, 22; Flanders and, 

227; O'Connell and, 67; Volunteers 

and. 218-220. 
Religious animosity fomented by Birrell. 

179; by Castlereagh, Pitt, Wellington. 

Peel, 178; by England, 171, 178; in 

19th century by English, 185. 
Repeal, constitutional movement, 60; 

Home Rule and. contrasted. 66; Lalor 

(cf .) ; O'Connell and, 66. 
Revenge. Mac Neill on. 205. 
Revolution, two stages of Irish. 104-105; 

Mitchel on. 90-91. 
Rising, '98. 161. 
Robbing of I. by saddling British debt 

on I., 186-187; by tcixation, suppres- 
sion of trade. 187-188. 

Sagas. "Back to the." 130-133. 

School. Gaelic conception of, 122. 

Sedition, in statistics. 206-214. 

Separation. I.'s historic claim, 21 ; I.'s 
historic claim proven. 22-26; neces- 
sity of. 46. 52; O'Connell on. 181; 
Tone, Davis, Lalor, Mitchel, for, 67. 

Separatism, national position of I., 25. 



Separatist, four great, voices, 25-26; 
Tone The. 25 ; Literature, 24-25 ; syn- 
thesis of, tradition, 26. 

Sheil, 181. 

Shrewsbury, O'Connell's letter to, 164- 
165; type of English Catholic relative 
to I.. 164-165. 

Sinn Feiner, defined, 163-164. 

Sovereignty, consent and, 75-76; nature 
of national, 52, 72-73. 

St. Enda's, 101. 112. 

Teacher, personality of, 125; true func- 
tion of, 155. 

Thinkers, four names, 27; greatest of 
Irish political, 37; political leader and 
political, 30; who thought authenti- 
cally for I., 30. 

Tone, Davis and, 61, 64, 70, 77; Demo- 
crat, 47; described, 37; Emmet and. 
29; eulogy by Pearse, 94-100; gave 
I. political philosophy, 35-53; Grat- 
tan and, contrasted. 61 ; greatest of 
Irishmen, says Pearse. 37. 94; practi- 
cal, 51; teaching summed up, 51-52; 
The Separatist, 25. 

Treaties, broken. 169. 

Union. Act of. Bribery to secure, 173; 
effects of. 188; opposition to. 172; 
O'Connell on, 167-174; Plunket on, 
171; Act of, Saurin on, 171; John- 
son on, 186. 

Unity, political and spiritual, of I., 57. 

Vilification, The O'Rcihilly on use of, 
230. 

Volunteers, arming of. 105; attitude of 
England and Parliamentarians, 218- 
219; Belgium and, 222; Pearse and, 
106, 112; started, 216; Redmond and, 
218-219. 

War. the Great, and I., 139-140, 172- 
173, 204-205, 214. 

Young Ireland. Leaders of. 70; O'Con- 
nell's opposition to, 162. 



EIGHT BOOKS ON lEELAND 



Title 

Aryan Origin of Gaelic Race and 

Language 

Ireland Vindicated 

Ireland Under English Rule 

The Irish Republic. Why? 

Irish Nationality 

The Resurrection of Hungary 

The Ballads of Ireland 

Irish Minstrelsy 

The Evolution of Sinn Fein 

History of the Sinn Fein Movement and 

Rebellion of 1916 

Phases of Irish History 

Principles of Freedom 

Jail Journal 

Last Conquest of Ireland (Perhaps) 

Apology for the British Government in Ireland 

O'Brien, Michael J. A Hidden Phase of American History 

O Flannghaile, Tomds For the Tongue of the Gael 

Regan, John X. What Made Ireland Sinn Fein 

Ireland and Presidents of the United States 

What Americans Have Said About Ireland 

(About to be Published) 

The Story of a Success (Pearse at St. Enda's) 

Speeches From the Dock 

History of Ireland 

Tone, Theobald Wolf Autobiography 



Author 
Bourke, Canon Ulick 

Carey, Mathew 
Emmet, Dr. Thomas Addis 
Ginnell, Lawrence 
Green, Alice Stopford 
Griffith, Arthur 
Hayes, Edward 
Hardiman, James 
Henry, R. M. 
Jones, F. P. 

Mac Neil, Eoin 

Mac Swiney, Terence 

Mitchel, John 



Ryan Desmond, 
Sullivan, A. M. 



(N. B. — Most of these books should be obtainable at local bookstores ; 
if not, see that they shall be, — or, get them directly from "The Irish 
Industries Depot" of 779 Lexington Avenue, New York, N. Y., which 
makes a specialty of keeping in stock all publications relating to Ire- 
land. — Editor. ) 



COLLATEKAL BEADING (Pamphlets) 

Macksey, S.J., Charles B. Sovereignty and Consent 

(The American Press, 173 E. 83d Street, New York, N. Y.) 

Fisher, Sydney George The American Revolution and 

the Boer War 

(This last furnishes formidable arguments from analogy for Ire- 
laud's Cause and demolishes once and for all the Civil War — analogy 
cant. — Editor.) 



WHAT IS SAID OF 

IKELAXD AND PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED 

STATES * 

By John X. Rbgan^ M. A. 

John W. Goff^ formerly of the New York Supreme Court — 
A compendium of value to the student and orator, it is 
concise, lucid, and comprehensive. 

Daniel F. Cohalan/Justice of the New York Supreme Court 
— The work is a decided addition to the literature of the 
Irish movement. It covers ground hitherto untouched and 
shows clearly the marked sympathy which so many of the 
Presidents had for the cause of liberty. 1 hope it may have 
a wide circulation. 

Bishop Shahan, Rector of the Catholic University of 
America — The idea is an excellent one, and the material 
you have collected is quite new. It shows clearly that the 
great Executives of the United States have always been 
cordially in favor of the rights of Ireland, the chief of 
which is her Independence. I trust that this little valuable 
pamphlet will have the widest distribution. 

David I. Walsh, of the United States Senate — This pam- 
phlet should be read by every American who is sincerely 
interested in obtaining information in reference to Amer- 



ica's position on the Irish Cause. It states concisely and 
accurately the views of the Presidents of the United States 
upon this subject which is today engaging the sympathetic 
attention of America, and contains proof that practically 
every great man in American life has sympathised with 
the suffering and oppression of the people of Ireland and 
that America has always stood by the small nations that 
needed support. No one can read it without being con- 
vinced of the support by our American leaders of the as- 
pirations of the Irish people for a government of their 
own choice. 

Hon, Joseph F. O'Connell — Your little pamphlet, "Ireland 
and Presidents of the United States," has just come to my 
attention, and I hope you will permit me to congratulate 
you on the sjDlendid evidence of research which you have 
displayed. It is particularly gratifying to all American 
citizens to know that so many of our Presidents have taken 
such an open stand on behalf of the rights of Ireland. 

Shane Leslie_, Editor of the Dublin Review — I purchased 
your pamphlet for historical and not patriotic reasons but 
both are amply satisfied. It is a pleasure to read a genu- 
ine piece of research which is bound to do more good to the 
Irish Cause than the most glowing but unsupported state- 
ments. The truth is the truth and in the final run Ireland 
must abide by what is true and not by what is oratorical. 
Let us tell the truth and shame her enemies for the truth 
without extension or exaggeration will make her free. 

The Irish World, July 5, 1919 — This pamphlet will live in the 
records of Irish-American literature. On account of its 
high literary merit it constitutes the most remarkable con- 
tribution to Irish literature of the year 1919. It deserves 
a large circulation, and we hope Irish committees and so- 
cieties will procure copies. 

Very Reverend F. X. McCabe_, CM., LL.D., President of Db 
Paul University — Have just finished reading your splen- 



did pamphlet "Ireland and Presidents of the United 
States." You have contributed the most convincing state- 
ment of Ireland's Cause that I have ever read. No man 
can claim fideUty to American principle without demand- 
ing the recognition of Irish Independence. This you show 
very strongly by the testimony of the Presidents of the 
United States. Would that every American had a copy. 

Cardinal Gibbons — I trust your pamphlet will enjoy a wide 
circulation. 

News Letter of the Irish National Bureau — It is a collec- 
tion of carefully verified and interesting statements on Ire- 
land made by our American Presidents. 

America, National Catholic Weekly — A recent pamphlet 
that will interest the friends of Irish freedom is J. X. Re- 
gan's "Ireland and Presidents of the United States." The 
author first makes a stirring appeal to "America's honor" 
in behalf of Erin and then cites the words spoken by our 
Presidents, from Washington to Roosevelt, urging Ire- 
land's right to liberty and he skillfully interweaves cer- 
tain utterances of President Wilson. 



*(Five cents per copy, $3.50 per hundred, $30 per thousand. Address 
J. X. Regan, "Washington Press," 242 Dover St., Boston, Mass.) 



WHAT MADE IRELAND SINN FEIN? 



PUBLISHED BY 

John X. Regan. 



$2.00 per copy, address J. X. Regan, "Washington Press," 
242 Dover St., Boston, Mass. 






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